Is The Diary of Anne Frank genuine?

 

Publishers’ note (1980)

The report you are about to read was not meant for publication. As Professor Faurisson conceived it, it made up only one part, amongst others, of a work he intended to devote to the Diary of Anne Frank.

If we publish it today, despite the reticence of its author who, for his part, would rather have seen the publication of a more extensive work comprising elements that are still in preparation, it is because the French press and the foreign press have made something of a row about the Professor’s opinion on the Diary of Anne Frank, and the public, for its part, may feel the need to judge on actual evidence. Therefore we have preferred to put the gist of that evidence at the public’s disposal. Readers will thus be able to make up their own minds on Faurisson’s methods of work and on the results at which he arrived in August 1978.

This report, in the exact form* in which we publish it, already has an official existence. It was in August 1978 that it was transmitted, in its German version, to barrister Jürgen Rieger to be filed with a court in Hamburg. Mr Rieger was and is still today the defender of Ernst Römer, brought to trial for having publicly expressed his doubts about the authenticity of the Diary.

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* Author’s note (16 May 2010): With one exception. The original report included an appendix 3 consisting of an attestation from a university professor, Michel Le Guern, noted for his proficiency in the appraisal of texts. That attestation’s closing sentence read: “It is certain that the practices of literary communication authorise Mr Frank, or anyone else, to construct as many fictional figures of Anne Frank as he may like, but on condition he not assert that the figure of his daughter is identical to any of those fictive beings.” Each page of my report bore Pr Le Guern’s signature or initials. Two other academics, Frédéric Deloffre and Jacques Rougeot, were about to find along the same lines when suddenly, in November 1978, the “Faurisson affair” flared up in the press. Rendered prudent by the circumstances, they preferred to refrain. For more details the reader is referred to the postscript below dated 1 April 2003.

 

***

 

Author’s note (1997)

This report, expressly intended for a court of law, was accompanied by three appendices.

The first contained fourteen photographic documents [reproduced below after the aforementioned postscript].

The second contained, in a sealed envelope, the name of the witness in the Karl Silberbauer case (section 68 below) and that of the person accompanying me; today I am able to reveal that the two were, respectively, the widow Mrs Silberbauer and Mr Ernst Wilmersdorf, both of Vienna.

The court, having heard the parties and begun to examine the basis of the litigation, decided, to everyone’s surprise, to adjourn the case sine die.

In keeping with usual practice, from the trial’s opening the press dictated to the court the conduct to adopt. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democratic party went onto the frontline of the battle and, in a long open letter, vigorously took a position in Mr Frank’s favour. For that political party the case was decided beforehand and the Diary‘s authenticity had been proved a long time ago.

The court in question, despite Mr Rieger’s efforts to relaunch the case, has never handed down a judgment. The German press deplored the fact that Mr Otto Frank was still having to wait for “justice to be done”. Still, this refusal to judge amounts to progress. In a similar case, Professor Faurisson had drawn up a five-page report summarising his research and findings on the “gas chambers”. That statement was signed and the signature legalised. The Professor had gone so far as to cite the text appearing in the French Journal officiel stipulating that a legalisation of signature in France was valid in West Germany. A waste of effort: in its holdings the court ruled that “Faurisson” was only a pseudonym. On the same grounds it rejected the testimony of American professor Arthur R. Butz. Justice is equal for all, subject to the exceptio diabolica.

 

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1) “Is The Diary of Anne Frank” genuine? For two years that question has been included in the syllabus of my seminar of “Critical appraisal of texts and documents”, reserved for degreed students (fourth year).

2) “The Diary of Anne Frank is a fraud”: that is the conclusion from our studies and research, and that is the title of the book I shall publish.

3) In order to study the question posed and find an answer, I have conducted the following investigations:

— [Chapter I] Internal criticism: the Diary’s text itself (in Dutch) contains an inexplicable number of implausible or inconceivable alleged facts (sections 4-12).

— [Chapter II] Study of the premises in Amsterdam: on the one hand, the physical impossibilities and, on the other, the explanations forged by Anne Frank’s father severely compromise the latter (sections 13-17 with, in appendix 1, photographic documents).

— [Chapter III] Interview with the principal witness: Mr Otto Frank; this interview proved damning for the father of Anne Frank (sections 18-47).

— [Chapter IV] Bibliographical examination: curious silences and revelations (sections 48-55).

— [Chapter V] Return to Amsterdam for a new investigation: the interviews with witnesses proved unfavourable to Mr Frank; the likely truth (sections 56-63).

— [Chapter VI] The two men who, respectively, reported and arrested the Franks: why has Mr Frank wished to assure them such anonymity? (sections 64-71, with appendix 2: “Confidential”).

— [Chapter VII] Comparison between the Dutch and German texts: wanting to do too much, Mr Frank gave himself away; he signed a literary fraud (sections 72-103).

 

Chapter I

Internal criticism

4) The first step in the investigation is to determine whether the text is consistent within itself. The Diary of Anne Frank proves to contain an inexplicable number of implausible or inconceivable alleged facts.

5) The noises – Let us take the example of the noises. The persons in hiding, we are told, must not make the least noise. This is so much the case that, if they cough, they quickly take codeine. The “enemies” might hear them. The walls are so “thin” (25 March 1943). These “enemies” are very numerous: Lewin, who knows the building “like the back of his hand” (1 October 1942), the men from the shop, the customers, the deliverymen, the postman, the cleaning woman, the night watchman Slagter, the plumbers, the “sanitation service”, the accountant, the police who conduct their house searches, the neighbours both near and far, the owner, etc. It is therefore implausible, even inconceivable that Mrs Van Daan should have been in the habit of using the vacuum cleaner every day at 12:30 pm (5 August 1943). Vacuum cleaners of the era were, moreover, particularly loud. I ask: “How is that conceivable?” My question is not merely formal. It is not oratorical. Its purpose is not to show astonishment. My question is a question. It needs an answer. This question could be followed by forty other questions concerning noises. An explanation is needed, for example, for the use of an alarm clock (4 August 1943). An explanation is needed for the noisy carpentry work: removal of wooden steps, the changing of a door into a pivoting bookcase (21 August 1942), the making of a wooden menorah (7 December 1942). Peter splits wood in the attic before the open window (23 February 1944), work done in order to make, with that wood, “cupboards and other odds and ends” (11 July 1942), and even to build, in the attic,… “a cubbyhole” in which to work (13 July 1943). There is the nearly constant noise of the radio, slammed doors, “endless shouting” (6 December 1943), the arguments, the cries, the yelling, a fracas that “was enough to raise the dead” (9 November 1942). “This was followed by shouts and squeals […]. I was doubled up with laughter” (10 May 1944). The episode related on 2 September 1942 is irreconcilable with the need to be silent and discreet. There we see those in hiding at table. They chatter and laugh. Suddenly, a piercing whistle is heard. And then the voice of Peter who shouts through the stove pipe that he will certainly not be coming down. Mr Van Daan leaps up, “his napkin falling to the floor, and shouted, with the blood rushing to his face, ‘I’ve had enough!’” He goes up to the attic whence one hears “struggling and kicking”. The episode related on 10 December 1942 is of the same kind. There we see Mrs Van Daan being looked after by the dentist Dussel. The latter touches a bad tooth with his probe. Mrs Van Daan then “utter[s] incoherent cries” of pain. She tries to pull the little probe away. The dentist “observed the scene, his hands on his hips, while the rest of us roared with laughter”. Anne, instead of showing the least anxiety in the face of these cries or this mad laughter, declares: “Of course, that was very mean of us. If it’d been me, I’m sure I would have yelled even louder.”

6) The curtains, the refuse, the smoke, the food, etc. – I could repeat the remarks that I make here on the noises in regard to all the realities of material and moral life. The Diary even presents the particularity of not one aspect of the life lived in the house avoiding being either implausible, incoherent or absurd. From the very time of their arrival in the hiding place, the Franks, in order to conceal their presence, install curtains. However, is not installing curtains at windows that, till now, have had none the best way of drawing attention to one’s arrival? Is this not particularly the case if those curtains are made of “scraps of fabric, varying greatly in shape, quality and pattern” (11 July 1942)? In order not to betray their presence, the Franks burn their refuse. But, in doing so, they call attention to their presence with the smoke that escapes from the roof of a supposedly uninhabited house! They make a fire for the first time on 30 October 1942, although they arrived in the place on 6 July. One wonders what they can have done with their refuse of 116 days, mostly of summer. I shall recall, on the other hand, that the food deliveries are huge. In normal diet the persons in hiding and their guests each day consume eight breakfasts, eight to twelve lunches and eight dinners. In nine passages of the book allusion is made to bad, mediocre or insufficient food. Elsewhere the food is abundant and “delicious”. Mr Van Daan “takes a generous portion of whatever he likes” and Dussel “consumes enormous portions” of food (9 August 1943). On the premises they make sausages and salamis, strawberry jam and preserves in jars. Nor do spirits, cognac, wine or cigarettes seem to be lacking. Coffee is so unrare that one fails to understand why the author, enumerating (23 July 1943) what each would want to do on the day he or she was able to leave the hiding place, says that Mrs Frank’s fondest wish would be to have a cup of coffee. On the other hand, on 3 February 1944 – i.e. during the terrible winter of ’43-’44 – here is the inventory of supplies available for those in hiding alone, to the exclusion of any cohabiting friend or “enemy”: 30 kilos of wheat, about 30 kilos of beans and 10 pounds of peas, 50 tins of vegetables, 10 tins of fish, 40 tins of milk, 10 kilos of powdered milk, 3 bottles of salad oil, 4 jars of salted butter, 4 jars of meat, 2 bottles of strawberries, 2 bottles of raspberries, 20 bottles of tomatoes, 10 pounds of oat flakes, 8 pounds of rice. Entering, at other moments, are sacks of vegetables each weighing… 25 kilos, or again a sack of 19 pounds of fresh peas (8 July 1944). The deliveries are made by a “nice greengrocer”, and always “during the lunch hour” (11 April 1944). This is implausible. How, in a city described elsewhere as famished, can a greengrocer leave his shop, in broad daylight, with such loads to leave in a building located in a busy district? How could this greengrocer, in his own district (he was “of the neighbourhood”), avoid meeting his normal customers for whom, in those times of great scarcity, he must normally be a man to be sought out and courted? There are several other mysteries regarding other goods and how they reach the hiding place. For holidays and birthdays, gifts abound: carnations, peonies, narcissi, hyacinths, flower pots, cakes, books, sweets, a cigarette lighter, jewels, shaving kits, a roulette game, etc. In this regard I would point out a real feat of prowess on Elli’s part. She finds the way to make a present of grapes on 23 July 1943. I do indeed say grapes, in Amsterdam, on a 23rd of July. We are even told the price: 5 guilders the kilo.

7) The pivoting bookcase – The invention of the “pivoting bookcase” is an absurdity. Indeed, the part of the building supposed to have housed the persons in hiding existed well before their arrival. Therefore, to install a bookcase is to signal, if not a human presence, at least a change in that part of the building. This transformation of the premises – accompanied by the noise of the carpentry work – could not escape the notice of the “enemies” and, in particular, of the cleaning woman. And this alleged “subterfuge” designed to mislead the police in case of a search, is indeed quite likely, on the contrary, to alert them (“Because so many houses are being searched for hidden bicycles”, writes Anne on 21 August 1942, “Mr Kugler thought it would be better to have a bookcase built in front of the entrance to our hiding place”)? The police, finding no entrance door to the building serving as hiding place, would be surprised by this oddity and would quickly discover that someone had sought to fool them, since they would be standing before a residential building without an entrance!

8) The windows, the electricity, the burglary, etc. – The story is also teeming with implausibilities, inconsistencies, absurdities with regard to the following points: the windows (open and closed), the electricity (on and off), the coal (taken from the common pile without the “enemies’” realising), the openings and closings of the curtains or camouflages, the use of the water and the toilets, the means of doing the cooking, the movements of the cats, the relocations from the front-house to the annex (and vice-versa), the behaviour of the night watchman, etc. The long letter of 11 April 1944 is particularly absurd. It relates a case of burglary. Let it be said in passing that the police are portrayed as stopping before the “pivoting bookcase”, in the middle of the night, under the electric light, in search of burglars who have broken in. They shake the “pivoting bookcase”. These policemen, accompanied by the night watchman, notice nothing and do not attempt to enter the annex! As Anne says later: “God was truly watching over us.”

9) The new owner and the architect – On 27 February 1943 we are told that the new owner has fortunately not insisted on visiting the annex. Koophuis has told him he does not have the key on him and this new owner, although accompanied by an architect, does not examine his new purchase either on this day or any other day.

10) Hiding with one’s family in one’s office – When one has a whole year to choose a hiding place (see 5 July 1942), does one choose one’s office? Does one bring along one’s family? And a colleague? And that colleague’s family? Does one choose a place full of “enemies” that the police and the Germans will automatically come to search should they not find one at home? Those Germans, it is true, are not very inquisitive. On 5 July 1942 (a Sunday) father Frank (unless it is Margot?!) has received a summons from the SS (see the letter of 8 July 1942). This summons will have no follow-up. Margot, sought by the SS, makes her way towards the hiding place by bicycle, and this on 6 July whereas, according to the first of the two letters of 20 June, the Jews had seen their bicycles confiscated some time ago.

11) Too many material absurdities – To dispute the Diary’s authenticity, arguments of a psychological, literary or historical order could be invoked. I shall refrain from doing so here. I shall simply remark that the material absurdities are so grave and so numerous that their repercussion is of a psychological, literary and historical order.

12) Square circles, so to speak – One should not ascribe to the author’s imagination or to the richness of her personality things that are, in reality, inconceivable. Something is inconceivable when “the mind can form no representation of it because the terms that designate it comprise an impossibility or a contradiction, for example: a square circle”. Someone who claims to have seen a square circle, ten square circles, a hundred square circles shows neither a fertile imagination nor a rich personality. For, indeed, what he says and nothing are exactly the same thing. He gives proof of his poverty of imagination. That is all. The absurdities of the Diary are those of a poor imagination developing outside any lived experience. They are worthy of a bad novel or a poor lie. Any personality of the slightest depth contains what are fittingly called psychological, mental or moral contradictions. I shall refrain from demonstrating here that Anne’s personality contains nothing of the sort. Her personality is just as fabricated and implausible as the experience that the Diary is supposed to relate.

From a historical standpoint, I shall not be surprised if a study of Dutch newspapers and English and Dutch radio broadcasts from June 1942 to August 1944 proves the fact of a fraud on the part of the Diary’s real author. On 9 October 1942 Anne already speaks of Jews “being gassed” (Dutch text: vergassing)!

 

Chapter II

Study of the premises in Amsterdam

13) On the one hand, the material impossibilities and, on the other, the explanations forged by Anne Frank’s father severely compromise the latter.

14) A glass house, accessible from all sides, visible to everyone; live-in neighbours – Someone who has just read the Diary cannot, normally, help but be shocked on discovering the “Anne Frank House”. He discovers a “glass house” that is visible and observable from all around and accessible from its four sides. He also discovers that the floor plan, as reproduced in the book through the efforts of Otto Frank, constitutes a retouching of the reality. Otto Frank had steered clear from drawing the ground floor and from telling us that the little courtyard separating the front house and the annex was only 3.7 metres wide. He had above all avoided pointing out that this same little courtyard was common to the “Anne Frank House” (263 Prinsengracht) and the house standing at the right when one looks at the façade (265 Prinsengracht). Thanks to a whole series of windows and window-doors, the people of 263 and those of 265 lived and moved about under the eyes and under the noses (cooking odours!) of their respective neighbours. The two houses make up one. Besides, the museum today unites the two buildings. What is more, the annex had its own entrance thanks to a door giving on, from the rear, to a garden. This garden is common to 263 Prinsengracht and to the people opposite, living at 190 Keizersgracht. (A person in the museum can see quite distinctly those people of 190 and, besides, those of a good number of other addresses of Keizersgracht.) From this side (the garden side) and from the other side (the canal side) I counted two hundred windows of old houses from which there was a view onto the “Anne Frank House”. Even the residents of 261 Prinsengracht could gain access, by the roof, to 263. It is laughable to suggest the least possibility of a really clandestine life within these spaces. I say this taking into account, of course, the changes made to the premises since the war. I asked ten successive visitors, while showing them the view onto the garden, how Anne Frank had been able to live hidden there with her family for twenty-five months. After a moment of surprise (for people visiting a museum are generally in something of a state of hypnosis), each one of those ten visitors realised, in a few seconds, the total impossibility of it. The reactions were varied: from some, consternation; from others, a burst of laughter (“My God!”). One visitor, doubtless ruffled, said: “Don’t you think it’s better to leave people to their dreams?” No-one supported the case made by the Diary, and this despite some pitiful explanations furnished by the museum’s flyers or inscriptions.

15) Absurd explanations – The explanations are:

1. The “enemies” present in one of the rooms of the front house believed that the windows giving onto the little courtyard gave directly onto the garden; they were thus unaware of the very existence of an annex; and, if they were unaware of that, it was because the windows were covered by black paper so as to assure the preservation of the spices stored inside;
2. As for the Germans, they had never thought of the existence of an annex, “since they didn’t know this kind of house”;
3. The smoke from the stove “did not draw attention since in former times this room (where it was situated) served as a laboratory for the little factory, where a stove had also had to burn every day”.

The first two of these three explanations come from a 36-page publication, without title and without date, printed by Koersen, Amsterdam. The last comes from the four-page flyer available at the museum’s entrance. The content of these two pieces of printed matter has received the endorsement of Mr Otto Frank. However, in all three cases, these explanations have not the least value. The annex was visible and tangible in a hundred ways from the ground floor (forbidden to visitors), the garden, the connecting corridors on four levels, the two windows of the office giving onto the courtyard, the neighbouring buildings. Some of the “enemies” even had to go there to answer the call of nature because there was nothing for that in the front house. The ground floor of the annex even received customers of the business. As for the “little factory” supposed to have existed “in former times”, right in the heart of this residential and commercial district, it is supposed to have, for at least two years, stopped spewing smoke, then, suddenly, on 30 October 1942, to have gone back to spewing smoke. And what smoke! Day and night! Winter and summer, heatwave or not. In the view of all (and, in particular, of “enemies” like Lewin, who used to have his chemist’s laboratory there), the “little factory” is supposed to have resumed operations! But why did Mr Frank strain his wits to find this explanation when, in other parts of the book, the annex is already described as a sort of ghost-house?

16) Mr Frank’s fabrications – In conclusion on this point, I would say that, unless I am wrong in refusing to accord any value to these “explanations”, we are entitled to assert:

1. That some facts, very grave for Mr Otto Frank, remain unexplained;
2. That Mr Otto Frank is capable of making up stories, even crude and mediocre ones, like those I have pointed out in my critical reading of the Diary. I ask my reader to bear this conclusion in mind; he will see, further on, what answer Mr Frank personally gave me, in the presence of his wife.

17) For the photographic documentation concerning the “Anne Frank House”, see below after the French editor’s postscript (appendix 1).

 

Chapter III

Interview with the principal witness: Mr Otto Frank

18) This interview, lasting nine hours over two days, proved damning for the father of Anne Frank.

19) I had let Mr Frank know that I was preparing, with my students, a study of the Diary. I had made it clear that my speciality was the “appraisal of texts and documents” and that I needed a lengthy interview. Mr Frank granted me that interview with eagerness, and so it was that I was received at his home in Birsfelden, a suburb of Basel, first on 24 March 1977, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, then from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm and, finally, the next day, from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm. Actually, on the next day the meeting place had been arranged to be a bank in Basel, Mr Frank being keen to remove from a safe deposit box, in my presence, what he called his daughter’s manuscripts. Our interview was therefore conducted that day in part at the bank, in part on the way back to Birsfelden and, in part, once more, at Mr Frank’s house. All the sessions taking place at his house were in the presence of his wife (his second wife, since the first died in deportation – from typhus it seems, as did Margot and Anne). After the first minute of our interview I stated point blank to Mr and Mrs Frank that I had doubts about the Diary’s authenticity. Mr Frank showed no surprise. He declared his readiness to supply me with all the information I might want. I was struck, during those two days, by Mr Frank’s extreme amiability. Despite his age – 88 – he never used the pretext of his weariness to shorten our interview. In the Diary he is described as a man full of charm (see 2 March 1944). He inspires confidence. He knows how to anticipate people’s unexpressed wishes. He adapts to the situation remarkably well. He willingly adopts an argumentation based on feelings. He speaks much of tolerance and understanding. I only once saw him lose his temper, showing himself to be even intransigent and violent: it was with regard to the Zionist cause, which must seem sacred to him. Thus it was that he stated he would never again set foot on French soil because, in his opinion, France is no longer interested in anything but Arab oil, not caring at all about Israel. On only three points did Mr Frank fail to keep his promise to answer my questions. It is interesting to know that those three points are:

1. address of Elli, in Holland;
2. means by which to find the trace of the shopworker called, in the book, V. M. (and whose name, I knew, was probably Van Maaren);
3. means by which to find the Austrian Karl Silberbauer, who had arrested the persons in hiding on 4 August 1944.

20) The witnesses to avoid and the good witnesses, according to Mr Frank – As regards Elli, Mr Frank told me she was quite ill and that, “not very intelligent”, she could be of no help to me. As for the two other witnesses, they had had enough trouble as it was, without my going to pester them with questions that would remind them of a painful past. In contrast, Mr Frank recommended that I get in touch with Kraler (real name: Kugler), who had settled in Canada, and with Miep and her husband, still residing in Amsterdam.

21) Mr Frank admits to having “corrected” and “combined” the texts of “authentic” manuscripts – With regard to the Diary itself, Mr Frank stated that the substance of it was authentic. The events related were true. It was Anne, and Anne alone, who had written the manuscripts of that Diary. Like any literary author, Anne perhaps tended towards either exaggeration or imaginative transformation, but all within ordinary and acceptable limits, the factual truth not suffering. Anne’s manuscripts formed a significant set of writings. What Mr Frank had submitted to the publishers was not the text of those manuscripts, the purely original text, but one that he, in person, had typewritten: a “typescript.” He had been obliged to transform in this way the various manuscripts into a single “typescript” for different reasons. First, the manuscripts presented repetitions. Then, they contained some indiscretions. Then, there were passages of no interest. Lastly, there were… omissions! Mr Frank, noticing my surprise, gave me the following example (doubtless an innocuous example, but were there perhaps graver ones that he was hiding?): Anne liked her uncles very much; however, in her Diary, she had neglected to mention them amongst the people she held dear; so then, Mr Frank repaired that “omission” by mentioning the uncles in the “typescript”. Mr Frank told me he had changed dates! He had also changed the names of individuals. It was Anne herself, it seems, who had doubtless thought of these name changes. She had envisaged the possibility of publication. Mr Frank had found, on a bit of paper, the list of the real names with their false equivalents. Anne apparently even imagined calling the Franks by the name Robin. Mr Frank had cut out of the manuscripts certain specifications of the prices of things. Better: finding himself, at least for certain periods, with two different versions of the text before him, he had had to “combine” (his word) two texts into a single text. Summing up all those transformations, Mr Frank finally told me: “It was a difficult task. I did that task according to my conscience.”

22) The manuscripts: four notebooks, to begin – The manuscripts Mr Frank presented to me as being those of his daughter form an impressive set. I did not have the time to look at them closely. I trusted in the description that was given me and shall summarise it as follows:

– the first date is 12 June 1942; the last is 1 August 1944 (three days before the arrest);

– for the period from 12 June to 5 December 1942 (but this date corresponds to no printed letter) there is a small notebook covered in red, white and brown patterned cloth (the “Scotch notebook”);

– for the period from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943 there is no particular notebook (but see, in the following section, the “loose leaf sheets”). This notebook is said to have been lost;

– for the period from 2 December 1942 to 17 April 1944, then for the period from that same date of 17 April (!) to the last letter (1 August 1944), two black, cardboard-bound notebooks in brown paper book covers.

23) Then 338 loose leaf sheets – To these three notebooks and the missing one is added a collection of 338 “loose leaf sheets” for the period from 20 June 1942 to 29 March 1944. Mr Frank says that these sheets constitute a reworking and a reorganising, by Anne herself, of letters contained, in a first form, in the aforementioned notebooks: the “Scotch notebook”, the missing notebook, the first of the two black notebooks.

24) Then a collection of tidied-up Stories – Up to this point the total of what Anne is supposed to have written during her twenty-five months in hiding is, therefore, in five volumes. To that total one should add the collection of the Stories. These Stories are said to have been made up by Anne. The text is presented as a tidying up. This tidying up can only imply, to begin with, editing work on a draft; Anne therefore must have blackened a lot of paper!

25) The handwritings – I have no competence as regards handwriting analysis and thus cannot express an opinion on the subject. I can only give my impressions here. My impressions were that the “Scotch notebook” contained photos, images and drawings as well as a variety of very childish handwritings, whose disorder and fancy appear genuine. One would have to look closely at the handwriting of the texts taken by Mr Frank to form the entire beginning of the Diary. The other notebooks and the whole of the 338 “loose leaf sheets” are in what I would call: an adult handwriting. As for the manuscript of the Stories, it greatly surprised me. One would call it the work of a seasoned chartered accountant and not the work of a child of 14. The table of contents is presented as a register of the Stories with, for each piece, the date of composition, the title and the page number!

26) Two expert analyses in favour of the Diary‘s authenticity – Mr Frank sets great store by the conclusions of the two expert analyses called for, towards 1960, by the Lübeck public prosecutor in the case of a teacher (Lothar Stielau) who, in 1959, had expressed doubts about the Diary‘s authenticity (Case 2js 19/59, VU 10/59). Mr Frank had brought a lawsuit against that teacher. The handwriting analysis had been entrusted to Mrs Minna Becker. Mrs Annemarie Hübner, for her part, had been tasked with telling whether the texts printed in Dutch and in German were faithful to the text of the manuscript. The two expert reports, submitted as evidence in 1961, turned out favourable for Mr Frank.

27) Another expert analysis – But, on the other hand, what Mr Frank did not reveal to me – and what I was to learn well after my visit and through a German contact – is that the prosecutor in Lübeck had decided to have a third analysis made. Why a third analysis? And on what point, given that, to all appearances, the entire field susceptible to investigation was explored by the handwriting expert and by Mrs Hübner? The answer to these questions is as follows: the prosecutor realised that an analysis of the kind made by Mrs Hübner risked finding that Lothar Stielau was, in actual fact, right. In view of the first two analyses, it was going to be impossible to declare that the Diary was dokumentarisch echt (documentarily authentic) (!). Perhaps it could have been declared literarisch echt (literarily authentic) (!). The novelist Friedrich Sieburg would be tasked with answering that curious question.

28) Mrs Hübner – an expert – reports “omissions”, “additions”, “interpolations”, “reorganisings” of the texts; Mr Frank had collaborators – Of those three expert analyses only Mrs Hübner’s would really have been of interest to me. On 20 January 1978 a letter from Mrs Hübner led me to hope I would obtain a copy of her analysis. Shortly afterwards, with Mrs Hübner not answering my letters, I had a German friend telephone her. She had him know that “the matter was very delicate, given that a trial on the question of the Diary was currently under way in Frankfurt”. She added that she had got in touch with Mr Frank. According to the few elements I possess of the content of that analysis, it seems to note a great number of facts that are interesting from the standpoint of a comparison of the texts (manuscripts, “typescript,” Dutch text, German text). Mrs Hübner seems to have mentioned very numerous “omissions” (Auslassungen), “additions” (Zusätze), “interpolations” (Interpolationen). She apparently spoke of a text “revised” for the necessities of publication (überarbeitet). Besides, she seems to have gone so far as to name persons who supposedly gave their “collaboration” (Zusammenarbeit) to Mr Frank in his drafting of the “typescript”. Those persons would be Isa Cauvern and her husband Albert Cauvern. Mrs Anneliese Schütz, for her part, is supposed to have collaborated in establishing the German text, instead of being content with the role of translator.

29) But, says Mrs Hübner, none of this is very serious – Despite these facts that she herself revealed, Mrs Hübner supposedly concluded that the Diary (Dutch printed text and German printed text) was genuine. Thus she seems to have expressed the following opinion: “These facts are not serious.” That judgment can only be her personal one. There is the whole matter. Who assures us that another judgment entirely could not be pronounced on the facts pointed out by the expert? And then, to begin, has the expert shown impartiality and a really scientific spirit in calling the facts as she has called them? What she has called, for example, “interpolations” (a word scientific in appearance and ambiguous in scope) would others not call “retouchings”, “reworkings”, “intercalations” (words doubtless more exact, and more precise)? In the same manner, words like “additions” and, especially, “omissions” are neutral in appearance but, in actual fact, cover confused realities: an “addition” or an “omission” may be honest or dishonest; it may change nothing important in a text or it can, to the contrary, alter it profoundly. In the particular case at hand, these two words have a frankly benign appearance!

30) The case brought by Mr Frank against the teacher Lothar Stielau never went to court – In any event those three expert analyses (Becker, Hübner and Sieburg) cannot possibly be deemed to have probative value, since they were not examined in court. Indeed, for reasons I do not know, Mr Frank was to drop his suit against Lothar Stielau. If my information is accurate, the latter agreed to pay 1,000 DM of the costs incurred of 15,712 DM. I suppose Mr Frank paid the court of Lübeck that 1,000 DM and added to that sum 14,712 DM of his own. I believe I recall Mr Frank’s telling me that Lothar Stielau had, moreover, agreed to offer him his written apology. Lothar Stielau, at the same time, had lost his teaching job. Mr Frank did not talk to me about Lothar Stielau’s co-defendant: Heinrich Buddeberg. Perhaps that man too had to pay 1,000 DM and offer an apology.

31) Mr Frank proved incapable of explaining the mass of material impossibilities – I dwell here on these matters of analyses only because, in our interview, Mr Frank had himself dwelt on them, whilst not mentioning certain important facts (for example, the existence of a third analysis), and whilst presenting me the two analyses as conclusive. The matter of the manuscripts did not interest me very much either. I knew I would not have the time to examine them closely. What interested me most of all was to know how Mr Frank would explain the “inexplicable quantity of implausible or inconceivable facts” that I had noted in reading the Diary. After all, what did I care whether manuscripts, even declared authentic by experts, contained that kind of facts if those facts could not be real? However, Mr Frank was to prove incapable of giving me the least explanation. In my view, he was expecting to see the authenticity of the Diary disputed by the usual arguments of a psychological, literary or historical order. He was not expecting arguments of internal criticism addressing the realities of material life: the realities which, as one knows, are “stubborn”. In a moment of disarray Mr Frank, moreover, was to tell me: “But… I never thought about those material matters!”

32) Through pure internal criticism, I detect a material anomaly and a textual anomaly – Before coming to precise examples of that disarray, I owe it to the truth to say that twice Mr Frank was to give me a good answer, and this concerning two episodes I have not mentioned hitherto, precisely because they were to find an explanation. The first episode had been incomprehensible because of a small omission in the French translation (at the time I did not possess the Dutch text). As for the second episode, it had been incomprehensible due to an error present in all the printed texts of the Diary. Where, at the date of 8 July 1944, there is a male greengrocer, the manuscript has: “la marchande de légumes” (the female greengrocer). And this is fortunate, for an attentive reader of the book knows quite well that the greengrocer in question cannot have delivered to those in hiding “19 pounds of green peas” (!) on 8 July 1944 for the good reason that he was arrested by the Germans 45 days before on the most serious of grounds (“He was hiding two Jews in his house”). This had put him “on the edge of an abyss” (25 May 1944). It was hard to conceive how a greengrocer leapt from “the abyss” in order to deliver to other Jews such a compromising quantity of goods. To tell the truth, it is hardly more conceivable on the part of the unfortunate man’s wife but the fact is there: the text of the manuscript is not absurd like the Dutch, French, German, and English printed texts… The manuscript had been drafted more carefully. The possibility remains that the error of the printed texts was perhaps not an error, but indeed a deliberate and misguided correction of the manuscript. In effect, the printed Dutch text reads: “[…] van der groenteboer om de hoek, 19 pond” [shouts Margot]; and Anne replies: “Dat is aarding van hem.” In other words, Margot and Anne use the masculine form twice: “from the local [male] greengrocer, 19 pounds”. Anne’s reply: “That’s nice of him.” For my part, I would draw two other conclusions from this episode:

1. Internal criticism bearing on a text’s consistency makes it possible to detect anomalies that prove to be true anomalies;
2. A reader of the Diary, having come to this episode of 8 July 1944, would be entitled to declare that a book in which one of the heroes (“the nice local greengrocer”) rises from the depths of the abyss as one resuscitates from death is absurd.

33) The greengrocer aided eight persons without knowing it – That greengrocer, Mr Frank told me, was called Van der Hoeven. Deported for having sheltered Jews in his house, he returned from deportation. During commemorative ceremonies he has sometimes appeared beside Mr Frank. I asked Mr Frank whether, after the war, people of the neighbourhood had said to him: “We suspected there were people hiding at 263 Prinsengracht.” Mr Frank answered explicitly that no-one had suspected their presence – not the men of the shop, not Lewin, not Van der Hoeven. The last had presumedly helped them without knowing it!

34) Mrs Frank’s reaction of good sense on hearing an “explanation” of Mr Frank’s – Despite my repeated questions on the point, Mr Frank was unable to tell me what his neighbours at no. 261 sold or made. He did not remember that there had been in his own house, at no. 263, a cleaning woman described in the book as a potential “enemy”! He ended up answering that she was “very, very old” and that she came only quite rarely, perhaps once a week. I said that she must have been astonished on suddenly seeing the installation of the “pivoting bookcase” on the second floor landing. He replied no, given that the cleaning woman never came by there. This answer was to cause, for the first time, something of an altercation between Mr Frank and his wife, also present at our interview. Before this, in effect, I had taken the precaution of having Mr Frank specify that the persons in hiding had never done any housekeeping apart from cleaning a part of the annex. The logical conclusion of his two statements thus became: “For twenty-five months, no-one did any cleaning of the second floor landing.” Grasping this implausibility, Mrs Frank abruptly intervened to say to her husband: “Come on! No cleaning on that landing! In a factory! But there would have been dust this high!” What Mrs Frank might have added is that that landing was supposed to serve as a passageway for those in hiding in their comings and goings between the annex and the front house. The trail of their goings and comings would have been obvious amidst so much accumulated dust. And this with no account taken of the dust from the coal carried up from below. In fact, Mr Frank could not be telling the truth when, in so speaking, he was talking about a sort of ghost of a cleaning woman for so big and dirty a house.

35) Several other reactions of good sense and a conclusion of good sense –  Several times, at the beginning of our interview, Mr Frank attempted in that way to supply explanations which, in the end, explained nothing at all and, instead, led him into impasses. I must say here that his wife’s presence would prove particularly useful. Mrs Frank, who was pretty well acquainted with the Diary, manifestly believed up to then in both the Diary‘s authenticity and her husband’s sincerity. Her surprise was only the more striking on realising the execrable quality of his answers to my questions. For my part, I retain a painful memory of what I would call certain “realisations” by Mrs Frank. I do not at all wish to say that Mrs Frank today takes her husband for a liar. But I do maintain that Mrs Frank was keenly aware, during our interview, of the anomalies and severe absurdities of the whole Anne Frank story. On hearing her husband’s “explanations” she happened to utter, in his regard, such phrases and sentences as:

“Come on!”

“What you’re saying is unbelievable!”

“A vacuum cleaner! That’s unbelievable! I’d never noticed it!”

“But you were really reckless!”

“That, really – that was reckless!”

Mrs Frank’s most interesting remark was: “I’m sure the people [in the vicinity] knew you were there.” For my part, I would say rather: “I’m sure the people in the vicinity saw, heard, smelled the presence of the persons in hiding, if indeed there were persons hiding in that house for twenty-five months.”

36) Mr Frank’s explanations, then silence – I would take one other example of Mr Frank’s explanations. According to him, the people who worked in the front house could not see the body of the annex building because of the “masking paper on the window panes”. This statement, which is found in the museum’s booklets, was repeated to me by Mr Frank before his wife. Without dwelling on it, I went on to another subject: that of electricity consumption. I pointed out that use of electricity in the house had to be considerable. Mr Frank being surprised at my remark, I specified: “It had to be considerable because the lights were on all day in the office on the courtyard and in the shop on the front house courtyard.” Mr Frank then said: “How do you mean? Electric lighting isn’t needed in broad daylight!” I remarked that those indoor spaces could not receive the daylight, given that the windows had “masking paper” over them. He then replied that the spaces were, nonetheless, not in the dark: a disconcerting reply, one in contradiction with the statement in the booklet written by Mr Frank: “Spices must be kept in the dark” (page 27 of the aforementioned 36-page booklet). Mr Frank then presumed to add that, anyhow, all that could be made out through the windows on the courtyard was a wall. He specified, contrary to the obvious, that it could not be seen that it was the wall of a house! A specification contradicting the following passage in the same booklet: “therefore, although you saw [obscured] windows, you could not see through them, and everyone took it for granted that they gave onto the garden” (ibidem). I asked whether those obscured windows were, nonetheless, sometimes open, if only for airing out the office where visitors were received, if only in the summer, on torrid days. Mrs Frank agreed with me there, remarking that those windows had, all the same, to be open sometimes. Silence from Mr Frank.

37) Other silences – The list of noises left Mr and, especially, Mrs Frank perplexed. As regards the vacuum cleaner, Mr Frank started, saying to me: “But there couldn’t be a vacuum cleaner.” Then, upon my assurance that there had been one, he began to stutter. He told me that, if there was really a vacuum cleaner, they must have used it in the evening, when the employees (the “enemies”) had left the front house after work. I objected that the noise of a vacuum cleaner of that era would have been heard by the neighbours all the better (the walls were “thin” – 25 March 1943) as it would have been made in empty spaces or in the proximity of empty spaces. I revealed to him that, in any case, Mrs Van Daan, for her part, was supposed to have used the vacuum cleaner every day, regularly, at around 12:30 pm (the window likely being open). Silence from Mr Frank, whereas Mrs Frank was visibly moved. Same silence for the alarm clock, sometimes ringing at the wrong hour (4 August 1943). Same silence for the removal of the ashes, above all on hot days. Same silence about those in hiding helping themselves from the store of coal (a precious commodity), common to the whole house. Same silence on the matter of the bicycles used after their confiscation and after Jews had been forbidden to use them.

38) A number of questions thus remained unanswered or else, at first, gave rise to explanations by which Mr Frank aggravated his case. Then Mr Frank had, as it were, a brainwave: a magic formula. That formula was as follows: “Mr Faurisson, you are theoretically and scientifically right. I agree with you 100%…. What you point out to me was, in effect, impossible. But, in practice, that was still the way things happened.” I let him know that his statement bewildered me. I told him it was a bit as though he agreed with me that a door could not be at-the-same-time-open-and-closed and as though, despite this, he were telling me he had seen such a door. I pointed out, besides, that the words “scientifically” and “theoretically” and “in practice” were unnecessary and introduced a distinction devoid of meaning for, in any case, regardless of whether it were “theoretical,” “scientific” or “practical”, a door at-the-same-time-open-and-closed quite simply could not exist. I added that I would prefer, for each particular question, an appropriate response or, should he prefer, no answer at all.

39) The “explanations” given to visitors in Amsterdam are worthless: they are for tourists – Towards the start of our interview Mr Frank had made, in the friendliest way in the world, a capital concession, a concession announced by me in section 16 above. As I was beginning to have him understand that I found the explanations he had supplied in his booklets absurd, as concerned both the Germans’ ignorance of the typical architecture of Dutch houses and the constant presence of smoke above the annex (the “little factory”), he wanted to admit right away, without any insistence on my part, that it was a matter there of pure inventions of his. Without using, it is true, the word inventions, he stated, in substance: “You’re completely right. In the explanations given to visitors, one has to simplify. That’s not so serious. It has to be made agreeable for the visitors. It’s not the scientific way. One isn’t always fortunate enough to be able to be scientific.”

40) Inventions that the public will like – That remark in confidence enlightens us on what I believe to be a character trait of Mr Frank: he has the sense of what the public like and seeks to adapt himself accordingly, even if it means taking liberties with the truth. Mr Frank is not a man to worry himself overmuch. He knows that the general public are content with little. The public seek a sort of comfort, dream, easy world where they will be served exactly the kind of emotion that strengthens them in their habits of feeling, seeing and reasoning. That smoke above the roof might unsettle the public? No problem! Let’s invent an explanation not necessarily plausible, but simple and, if need be, simple and crude. Perfection is attained if that invention panders to conventional wisdom or habitual sentiments: for instance, it is quite likely that for those who love Anne Frank and come to visit her house, the Germans are brutes and beasts; well, they will find a confirmation of that in Mr Frank’s explanations: the Germans went so for as to be ignorant of the architecture typical of Amsterdam houses (sic!). In a general way, Mr Frank appeared to me, more than once, as a man utterly lacking in finesse (but not in trickery) and for whom a literary work is, compared with reality, a form of lying invention, a domain where one takes liberties with the truth, a thing that “is not so serious” and makes it possible to write practically anything.

41) The “anomalies” of the floor plan. Mr Frank concedes that the bookcase was pointless – I asked Mr Frank what explanations he could offer on the two points where he concurred that he told visitors nothing of consequence. He was unable to answer. I questioned him on the layout of the premises. I had noted anomalies in the house’s floor plan such as it is reproduced by Mr Frank – in all the editions of the Diary. Those anomalies had been confirmed for me by my visit to the museum (with account taken of the changes made to the premises in order to make a museum of them). It was then that, once again, Mr Frank, faced with the obvious physical reality, was led to make some new and weighty concessions to me, particularly, as will be seen, with regard to the “pivoting bookcase”. He began by admitting that the floor plan diagram should not have concealed the fact that the small courtyard separating the front house from the annex was common to no. 263 (the Frank house) and to no. 265 (the house of their neighbours and “enemies”); besides, it is bizarre that, in the Diary, there was not the slightest allusion to this fact which, for the persons in hiding, was of extreme gravity. Mr Frank then acknowledged that the diagram suggested that on the third floor the open air passageway was not accessible; however, that passageway was accessible by a door from the annex and it could quite well have offered either the police or the “enemies” an easy access to the very heart of the premises where the fugitives dwelt. Lastly and above all, Mr Frank conceded that the “pivoting bookcase”… made no sense. He acknowledged that this cosmetic change could by no means have prevented a search of the annex, since the annex was accessible by other ways and, notably, by the most natural way: the entrance door giving onto the garden. This obvious fact, it is true, will not appear to someone viewing the diagram, for the diagram includes no drawing of any part of the ground floor. As for the museum visitors, they do not have access to that ground floor. That famous “bookcase” thus becomes a particularly aberrant invention of “the fugitives”. One must, in effect, imagine here that the making of that “bookcase” was a perilous job. The destruction of the stair steps, the assembling of that false bookcase, the transforming of a passageway into an apparent dead end, all that could only arouse the “enemies’” suspicions. All that had therefore been suggested by Kraler and executed by Vossen (21 August 1942)!

42) Had the fugitives nothing to fear? – The more my interview went on, the more Mr Frank’s embarrassment became visible. But his amiability did not wane; to the contrary. Towards the end Mr Frank was to use a sentimental line of argument, apparently clever and in a good natured tone. That line was the following: “Yes, I grant you that, we were a bit reckless. Certain things were a little dangerous, it must be acknowledged. Besides, that’s perhaps the reason why we were finally arrested. But don’t think, Mr Faurisson, that the people were suspicious to that extent.” This curious line of argument would lead him to make such remarks as: “The people were kind!” or: “The Dutch were good!”, or even, on two occasions: “The police were good!”

43) … or everything to fear? – These remarks had but one disadvantage: they rendered all the “precautions” pointed out in the book absurd. To some degree, they even stripped the book of all its sense. That book recounts, in effect, the tragic adventure of eight persons who are hunted, forced to hide, to bury themselves alive for twenty-five months in the midst of a ferociously hostile world. In those “days in the tomb” only a few elite beings knew of their existence and brought them help. It may be said that in resorting to his last arguments Mr Frank was attempting, with one hand, to stop up the cracks in a work that, with the other hand, he was dismantling.

44) A curious revelation of Schnabel’s book – On the evening of our first day of interviews, Mr Frank handed me his own copy, in French, of the book by Ernst Schnabel, Spur eines Kindes (French title: Sur les traces d’Anne Frank; English title: Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage). He told me I might find in it answers to some of my questions. The pages of that copy had not been separated. It must be mentioned that Mr Frank speaks and understands French but reads it with a little difficulty. (I specify here that all our interviews took place in English, a language that Mr Frank masters perfectly.) I had not yet read that book, because strict observance of the methods proper to pure internal criticism entails an obligation to read nothing about a work so long as one has not yet personally got a clear idea of it. During the night preceding our second interview I browsed through the book. Amongst the ten or so points that would confirm for me that the Diary was a pure fabrication (and this notwithstanding Schnabel’s many efforts to persuade us of the contrary), I noted, on page 151, an astounding passage. This passage concerned Mr Vossen, the man who, it seems, had devoted his energies as a carpenter for the making of the “pivoting bookcase” meant to conceal the hiding place (Diary, 21 August 1942). The “good Vossen” was supposed to work at 263 Prinsengracht. He used to keep the fugitives informed on everything that happened in the shop. But illness now obliged him to stay at home, where his daughter Elli joined him after working hours. On 15 June 1943 Anne speaks of him as a dear friend. However, according to a remark of Elli reported by Schnabel, the good Vossen… was unaware of the Franks’ existence at 263 Prinsengracht! Elli recounts, in fact, that on 4 August 1944, when arriving home, she informed her father of the Franks’ arrest. “I sat on the edge of the bed and told him everything. My father liked Mr Frank very much, had known him for a long time. He was unaware that the Franks had not left for Switzerland, as was claimed, but had gone into hiding on the Prinsengracht.” But what is incomprehensible is that Vossen could have believed that rumour. For nearly a year he had been able to see the Franks at Prinsengracht, to speak with them, help them, befriend them. Then when, owing to bad health, he had quit his job on the Prinsengracht, his daughter Elli was able to keep him informed of the doings of his friends, the Franks.

45) This revelation does not appear in the German or American version – Mr Frank could not explain that passage from Schnabel’s book. Rushing to consult the German and the English texts of the book, he made a surprising discovery: the whole passage where Elli spoke with her father did indeed appear in those texts, but… without the sentence beginning “He was unaware” and ending with “the Prinsengracht”. In the French text, Elli continued: “II ne dit rien. Il restait couché en silence.” For comparison, here is the German text:

Ich setze mich zu ihm ans Bett und habe ihm alles gesagt. Er hing sehr an Herrn Frank, denn er kannte ihn lange [passage missing]. Gesagt hat er nichts. Er hat nur dagelegen. (Anne Frank/Ein Bericht von Ernst Schnabel, Spur eines Kindes, Fischer Bucherei, 1958, 168 pages, page 115.)

And here, the English text:

I sat down beside his bed and told him everything. He was deeply attached to Mr Frank, who he had known a long time [passage missing]. He said nothing. (Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, Ernst Schnabel, Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. Harbrace Paperback Library, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., New York 1958; 181 pages; page 132.)

46) A bibliographical curiosity – Once back in France, it was easy for me to clear up this mystery: from many other points in the French text it became evident that there had existed two original German versions. Schnabel’s first version must have been sent in “typescript” to the Paris publishing house Albin Michel to enable a translation into French without losing too much time. Thereupon Schnabel or, most likely, Mr Frank, had proceeded with a revision of his text. He had then eliminated the contentious sentence about Vossen. Then Fischer published that corrected version. But, in France, efforts had been redoubled and the book was already coming off the presses. It was too late to correct it. I note, moreover, a bibliographical curiosity: my copy of Sur les traces d’Anne Frank (translated from the German by Marthe Metzger, Albin Michel, 1958, 205 pages) bears the mention “18^th thousand” and its printing date was February 1958. However, the first thousand of the original German edition is from März 1958. Thus the translation did indeed appear before the original.

47) My relations with Mr Frank deteriorate – It remains, of course, to be known why Ernst Schnabel or Mr Frank had seen fit to make that astonishing correction. Nonetheless Mr Frank showed his disarray once again before this further anomaly. We took leave of each other in a most painful atmosphere, where each sign of friendliness shown by Mr Frank made me a bit more uneasy. Shortly after my return to France I wrote to thank him for his hospitality and to ask for Elli’s address. He replied amiably, asking me to send him back the copy of Schnabel’s book in French and saying nothing about Elli. I sent him back his copy, asking again for the address. No reply this time. I telephoned him at Birsfelden. He replied that he would not give me that address, all the less as I had sent Kraler (Kugler) an “idiotic” letter. I shall return to that letter.

 

Chapter IV

48) Bibliographical examination: Curious silences and revelations.

49) Schnabel’s book and the article in Der Spiegel – The aforementioned book by Schnabel (Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage) has some curious omissions, whilst the long article, unsigned, that Der Spiegel devoted to the Diary in the wake of the Stielau case (1 April 1959, pages 51-55), brings us some curious revelations. The title is eloquent: “Anne Frank. Was Schrieb das Kind?” (Anne Frank. What did the child write?)

50) Not one of the forty-two “witness” wished to talk about the Diary –  Ernst Schnabel openly defends Anne Frank and Otto Frank. His book is relatively rich on all that precedes and on all that follows the twenty-five months of their life at Prinsengracht. In contrast, it is extremely poor concerning those twenty-five months. One would say that the direct witnesses (Miep, Elli, Kraler, Koophuis, Henk) have nothing to declare on that period of capital importance. Why do they stay silent? Why have they said only a few banal things like “[…] when we had our plate of soup upstairs with them at noon” (page 114) or “We always had lunch together” (page 117)? Not one concrete detail, not one description, not one anecdote is there that, by its precision, would give the impression that the persons in hiding and their faithful friends regularly shared the same table at noon. Everything appears in a kind of fog. However, those witnesses were questioned only thirteen years, at the most, after the Franks’ arrest, and some of them, such as Elli, Miep and Henk, were still young. I am not talking about numerous other persons whom Schnabel wrongly calls “witnesses” but who, in fact, had never known or even met the Franks. This is the case, for example, with the famous “greengrocer” (Gemüsemann). “He did not know the Franks at all” (page 82). In a general way, the impression I get from Schnabel’s book is as follows: this Anne Frank really existed; she was a little young girl without great character, without strong personality, not precocious at school (the contrary even) and in whom no-one suspected any aptitude for writing; that unfortunate child experienced the war’s horrors; she was arrested by the Germans; she was interned, then deported; she went through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp; she was separated from her father; her mother died in the Birkenau infirmary on 6 January 1945; she and her sister, in or about October 1944, were transferred to Bergen-Belsen; Margot died of typhus; then, in her turn, Anne, alone in the world, was also to die of typhus in March of 1945. There we have points about which the witnesses did not hesitate to talk. But with all of them one senses mistrust before an Anne of legend, able to take up the pen, as we are told, to keep that Diary and write those Stories, and to draft “a beginning of a novel”, etc. Schnabel himself writes, revealingly: “My witnesses had a good deal to say about Anne as a person; they took account of the legend only with great reticence, or tacitly ignoring it. Although they did not take issue with it by so much as a word, I had the impression they were checking themselves. All of them read Anne’s diary; they did not mention it” (pages 4-5). That last sentence is important: “All of them had read Anne’s diary; they did not mention it.” Even Kraler, who from Toronto sent a long letter to Schnabel, made no mention either of the Diary or of Anne’s other writings (page 87). Kraler is the only direct witness to tell an anecdote or two about Anne; however, in a very curious way, he places these anecdotes in the period where the Franks still lived in their apartment on Merwedeplein, before their “disappearance” (“before they went into hiding”, page 87). It is only in the corrected edition that the second anecdote is placed at Prinsengracht, even “when they were in the secret annex” (page 88). The witnesses did not want their names to be published. The two most important witnesses (the “probable betrayer” and the Austrian policeman) were neither questioned nor even sought. Schnabel makes several attempts to explain this odd avoidance (pages 8, 139 and all of the end of chapter ten). He goes so far as to present a sort of defence of the arresting policeman! One person [Mrs Kuperus] nevertheless does, all the same, mention the Diary, but this is to draw attention to a point that seems bizarre to her, concerning the Montessori school where she was headmistress (page 40). Schnabel himself deals with the Diary oddly. How to explain, in effect, the cuts he makes when citing a passage like that on his page 123? Giving a long excerpt from the letter of 11 April 1944 in which Anne recounts the police raid in the wake of the burglary, he leaves out the sentence where Anne states the main reason for her anxiety: it is that the police, it seems, went so far as to give the “bookcase” some loud jolts. (“This, and when the police rattled the bookcase door, were my worst moments.”) Would Schnabel not have thought, like any man of sense, that that passage was absurd? In any event, he tells us he visited 263 Prinsengracht before its transformation into a museum. He did not see any “pivoting bookcase” there. He writes: “The bookcase that was built against the door to disguise it has been pulled down. Nothing is left but the twisted hinges hanging beside the door.” (page 74) He found no trace of any special camouflage but only, in Anne’s room, a yellowed piece of curtain (“A tattered, yellowed remnant of curtain still hangs at the window” (page 75). Mr Frank, it seems, marked in pencil on the wallpaper, near a door, the successive heights of his daughters. Today, at the museum, visitors can see an impeccable square of wallpaper, kept under glass, where the perfectly preserved pencil marks, which appear to have been made the same day, may be noted. We are told that these pencil marks indicated the heights of Mr Frank’s children. When I saw Mr Frank at Birsfelden I asked him whether this was not a “reconstitution”. He assured me it was all authentic. This is hard to believe. Schnabel, for his part, simply saw, as a mark, an “A 42” which he interprets as “Anne 1942”. What is curious is that the museum’s “authentic” paper bears nothing of the kind. Schnabel does say that he saw only that mark and that the others were destroyed or torn off (“the other marks have been stripped off” [ibidem].) Might Mr Frank have rendered himself guilty here of a trick (ein Trick), like the one he suggested to Henk and Miep for the photocopy of their passport?

A very interesting point about Anne’s story is that concerning the manuscripts. I regret to say that I find the account of their discovery, and then of their passing on to Mr Frank by his secretary Miep, implausible. The police are said to have scattered all sorts of papers on the floor. Amongst those papers, Miep and Elli are said to have gathered up a “Scotch notebook” (ein rotkariertes Buch; a red plaid book) and a number of other papers on which they recognised Anne’s handwriting. They supposedly read none of these. They are supposed to have put all these papers away in the big desk. Then, these papers were allegedly handed over to Mr Frank on his return from Poland (pages 179-181). This account does not square at all with the account of the arrest. The arrest was made slowly, methodically, correctly, just like the search. The testimonies are unanimous on this point (see Chapter IX). After the arrest the policeman returned to the premises several times. He questioned Miep in particular. The police wanted to know whether the Franks were in contact with other persons in hiding. The Diary, such as we know it, would have revealed, at a brief glance, a load of information of great value to the police and terribly compromising for Miep, Elli and all the friends of the fugitives. The police may have disregarded the “Scotch notebook” if, in its original state, it contained, as I think, only some drawings, photographs or notes of an innocuous nature. But it would seem implausible for them to leave several notebooks and several hundred scattered sheets on which the writing was, at least in appearance, that of an adult. As for Elli and Miep, it would have been madness on their part to gather together and keep, especially in the desk, such a mass of compromising documents. They knew, it seems, that Anne was keeping a diary. A diarist is supposed to recount what happens day to day. Consequently there was a risk that Anne mentioned Miep and Elli in them.

51) The Dutch know only a very belated, and heavily cut, edition of Spur eines Kindes [Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage] – On the subject of Schnabel’s book, Mr Frank had made a surprising revelation. He had told me that the book, although translated into several languages, had not been translated into Dutch! The reason for this exception was that the principal witnesses lived in Holland and, out of both modesty and a preference for calm and tranquility, they did not want people talking about them. In reality, Mr Frank was mistaken, or else he was deceiving me. An investigation conducted in Amsterdam would, at first, lead me to believe that Schnabel’s book had not been translated into Dutch. Even the Contact publishing house replied or had had others reply to several booksellers and private individuals that the book did not exist. I discovered then that, in a showcase at the museum, the book by Schnabel was said to have been translated and published in 1970 (twelve years after its publication in Germany, France and the United States!) under the title Haar laatste Levensmaanden (Her last months). The book, unfortunately, was impossible to find. Same replies from booksellers and from Contact publishers. By dint of insistence I finally got a reply from Contact saying that there remained only one archive copy. I obtained permission, not without difficulty, to consult it, and then to have photocopies of pages 263 to 304. For, in reality, the book in question contained only an excerpt from Schnabel’s book, reduced to 35 pages, and placed in appendix to the text of the Diary. The comparative study of Spur eines Kindes and of its “translation” into Dutch is of the greatest interest. Of the book by Schnabel, the Dutch can read in their language only the last five chapters (out of thirteen chapters in all). Moreover, three of those five chapters have undergone deletions of all sorts. Some of these deletions are indicated by ellipses. Others are not indicated at all. The chapters thus cut up are IX, X and XIII, i.e. those that concern, on the one hand, the arrest and its direct aftermath (in the Netherlands) and, on the other, the story of the manuscripts. As soon as it is no longer a question of those subjects but rather of the camps (as is the case in chapters XI and XII), the original text by Schnabel is respected. Examined closely, the cuts seem to have been effected to remove any details the least bit telling that were in the testimonies of Koophuis, Miep, Henk and Elli. For example, it is lacking, with nothing to indicate a cut, the crucial passage where Elli tells how she informed her father of the Franks’ arrest (the 13 lines of page 115 of Spur… are completely absent from page 272 of Haar Laatste Levensmaanden). It is an aberration that the only nation for whom a censored version of the life of Anne Frank has thus been reserved is precisely that nation where the adventure of Anne Frank had its inception. Can one imagine revelations about Joan of Arc being made to all sorts of foreign peoples, but forbidden, in a certain way, for the French people? Such a manner of proceeding is comprehensible only when publishers fear lest, in the country of origin, some “revelations” quickly seem suspect. The explanation given by Mr Frank hardly holds. Since Koophuis, Miep, Henk and Elli find themselves named anyhow (and, besides, under complete or partial pseudonyms), and since Schnabel has them say such and such things, one fails to see how the cuts made amidst those remarks might cater to their touchy modesty or assure them more tranquility in their life in Amsterdam. Rather, I would believe that the drafting of the Dutch translation gave rise to very long and laborious negotiating amongst all the interested parties or, at least, between Mr Frank and some of them. The “witnesses”, of course, agreed to collaborate with Mr Frank but, over the years, became more circumspect and stinting with details than in their original “testimonies”.

52) Der Spiegel reveals that there was a reworking and a rewriting – The aforementioned article in Der Spiegel brings us, as I have said, some curious revelations. By principle I distrust journalists. They work too quickly. Here, it is obvious that the journalist conducted a thorough investigation. The issue was too burning and delicate to be dealt with loosely. The finding of this long article could, in effect, be the following: while suspecting the Diary to be a forgery, Lothar Stielau perhaps proved nothing, but all the same he “ran into a really thorny problem – the problem of the genesis of the book’s publishing” (auf ein tatsächlich heikles Problem gestossen – das Problem der Enstehung der Buchausgabe, page 51). And it is revealed that we are very far from the text of the original manuscripts when we read in Dutch, German or in whatever language, the book entitled Diary of Anne Frank. Supposing for a moment that the manuscripts are authentic, one must know, in effect, that what we read under that title, for example in Dutch (i.e. in the supposed original language), is but the result of a whole series of reworking and rewriting jobs, done notably by Mr Frank and some close friends, amongst whom (for the Dutch text) Mr and Mrs Cauvern, and (for the German text) Anneliese Schütz, whose pupil Anne had been. 

53) The text’s transformations. The “collaborators” of Mr Frank – Between the original state of the book (i.e. the manuscripts) and its printed state (the Dutch edition by Contact in 1947), the text went through at least five successive states.

1. between late May 1945 and October 1945 Mr Frank established a sort of copy (Abschrift) of the manuscripts, in part alone, in part with the aid of his secretary Isa Cauvern (the wife of Albert Cauvern, a friend of Mr Frank’s: before the war the Cauverns had hosted the Frank children at their house for the summer holidays).
2. from October 1945 to January 1946 Mr Frank and Isa Cauvern worked together on a new version of the copy, a typewritten version (Neufassung der Abschrift/Maschinengeschriebene Zweitfassung).
3. at an unspecified date (end of the winter of 1945-1946), that second version (typewritten) was submitted to Albert Cauvern; as he was a radio man – a “reader” at the “De Vara” station in Hilversum – he was well versed in rewriting. According to his own words, he began by “largely changing” that version; he drew up his own text as a “man of experience” (Albert Cauvern stellt heute nicht in Abrede, dass er jene maschinengeschriebene Zweitfassung mit kundiger Hand redigiert hat: “Am Anfang habe ich ziemlich viel geändert”, page 52). A surprising detail for a diary: he did not shrink from grouping together under a single date letters written on different dates; at a second stage he confined himself to correcting the punctuation and errors of wording and grammar; all those changes and corrections were made on the typewritten text; A. Cauvern never saw the original manuscripts.
4. starting from the changes and corrections, Mr Frank established what one may call the third typewritten text in the spring of 1946; he submitted the result to “three prominent experts” (drei prominente Gutachter, page 53), letting them believe that it was the complete reproduction of a manuscript, with the quite understandable exception of a few points of a personal order; then, those three persons having apparently given their endorsement to the text, Mr Frank went on to offer it to several Amsterdam publishing houses, which refused it; turning then, in all likelihood – but this point is not very clear –, to one of those three persons, Mrs Anna Romein-Verschoor, he got her husband, Mr Jan Romein, professor of Dutch history at the University of Amsterdam, to write in the daily Het Parool a resounding article beginning with the words: “There has by chance fallen into my hands a diary [etc.]”; the article being highly laudatory, a modest publishing house in Amsterdam (Contact) asked to publish that diary.
5. with the agreement concluded or about to be concluded, Mr Frank went and found several “spiritual counsellors” (mehrere geistliche Ratgeber), amongst whom Pastor Buskes; he granted them full licence to censor the text (raumte ihnen freiwillig Zensoren-Befugnisse ein, pages 53-54). And that censorship was exercised.

54) Der Spiegel is troubled by the Diary‘s German “translation” – But the oddities do not end there. The German text of the Diary is the subject of some interesting remarks on the part of the Der Spiegel journalist. He writes: “One curiosity of the ‘Anne Frank literature’ consists in Anneliese Schütz’s translation work, of which Schnabel said: ‘I wish all translations were so faithful’, but whose text quite often diverges from the Dutch original” (page 54). Indeed, as I shall show further on (sections 72-103), the journalist is quite lenient in his criticism when he says that the German text diverges quite often from what he calls the original (that is to say, doubtless, from the original printed by the Dutch). The printed German text does not deserve to be called a translation of the printed Dutch text: it constitutes, strictly speaking, another book in itself. But let us pass over this point. We shall return to it later.

Anneliese Schütz, a great friend of the Franks, like them a Jewish German refugee in the Netherlands, and Anne’s teacher, thus prepared a text, in German, of her former pupil’s diary. She set to work on that job… for Anne’s grandmother! That woman, very old, did not in fact read Dutch. She therefore needed a translation into German, the Franks’ mother tongue. Anneliese Schütz composed her “translation” “in the grandmother’s perspective” (aus der Grossmutter-Perspektive, page 55). She took amazing liberties. Where, according to her own recollections, Anne had expressed herself better, she had Anne… express herself better! The grandmother was entitled to that! ([…] “die Grossmutter habe ein Recht darauf, mehr zu erfahren – vor allem dort, wo Anne nach meiner Erinnerung etwas besseres gesagt hatte” (ibidem). Let it be said in passing that Anneliese Schütz is never mentioned by Anne in the Diary. Are we to understand that she lived near Anne or that she met her during the twenty-five months when Anne was hiding at Prinsengracht? Following the “grandmother’s perspective”, which dictated certain “obligations”, there was what one may call the “commercial perspective” that dictated other obligations. In effect, when the time came to publish the Diary in Germany, Anneliese Schütz inserted new modifications. Let us take an example that she herself cites. The manuscript, it is said, included the following sentence: “no greater hostility in the world than between the Germans and the Jews” (ibidem). Anneliese Schütz replaced “the Germans” with “those Germans”, taking care to put “those” in italics, so as to give German readers to understand that there, Anne meant the Nazis. She stated to the Der Spiegel journalist: “I always told myself that a book meant to be sold in Germany cannot contain expressions offensive for the Germans” (ibidem). For my part, I would say that this argument – at once of a commercial, sentimental and political order – may perhaps be understandable when coming from a woman of Berlin Jewish origin, who had been active before the First World War in the suffragette movement and who had had to leave her country for political reasons, but otherwise this argument is all the less acceptable as the “offensive” words have been and continue to be propagated in millions of copies of the Diary sold throughout the world in languages other than German. And I am not speaking here from the simple standpoint of respect for the truth.

55) Mr Frank’s collaborators distance themselves from him – One does not have the impression that Mr Frank’s “collaborators” in the publishing of the Diary were very pleased with their work, nor that they were especially delighted about the fuss made of that Diary. Let us take those collaborators one by one: about Isa Cauvern, we can say nothing except that she committed suicide by throwing herself from her window in June 1946. Mr Frank had just signed or was about to sign his contract for publication with Contact. The reason for that suicide is unknown and it is at present impossible to establish any kind of link between it and the matter of the Diary. As regards the author of the preface, Anna Romein-Verschoor, she was to declare to Der Spiegel in 1959: “I was not at all wary enough” (Ich bin wohl nicht misstrauisch genug gewesen). Her husband had been no more wary. Albert Cauvern was never able to get Mr Frank to return to him the typewritten text on which he had worked. He had requested that text “in memory of my wife”, who died in 1946, and Mr Frank had not sent it back. Kurt Baschwitz, a friend of Mr Frank’s, was one of the “three eminent persons” (the two others being Mr and Mrs Romein). In 1959 he was to plead for an “agreement” between Mr Frank and Lothar Stielau. Moreover, he recommended a full publication of the text of the manuscripts to solve the problem. In order to know what the text actually was, that solution would have been, in effect, the most practical. Anneliese Schütz, for her part, was to show her strong disapproval both of the “Anne Frank myth” and of Mr Frank’s attitude towards Lothar Stielau. She was for a policy of silence: the least fuss possible about Anne Frank and her Diary. She went so far as to disapprove of Mr Frank and Ernst Schnabel for Spur eines Kindes: what need was there for that book? As for Stielau, if he had made the remark for which Mr Frank rebuked him, it sufficed to act as though no-one heard it. This “sharp” (scharff [ibidem]) reaction by Anneliese Schütz was all the more curious as that woman presented herself as the “translator” of the Diary into German and as Ernst Schnabel had – but did she know it? – pushed complacency so far as to say, with regard to that implausible “translation”: Ich wünschte, alle Übersetzungen waren so getreu (page 54) (“I wish all translations were so faithful”).

 

Chapter V

Return to Amsterdam for a new investigation

56) The interviews with witnesses proved unfavourable to Mr Frank. The likely truth.

57) If the Diary is a lie, what is the truth? – The internal criticism of the Diary had led me to think that it was a “cock and bull story”, a novel, a lie. The subsequent investigations had only served to reinforce that judgment. But, if I indeed saw where the lie was, I still did not see where the truth was. I saw indeed that the Frank family could not have lived for twenty-five months at 263 Prinsengracht in the manner in which they claimed. But how had they lived in reality? Where? With whom? And, to finish, was it in fact at 263 Prinsengracht that they had been arrested?

58) Kraler / Kugler refuses to answer my letter – With no illusions as to the answers he would give me, I put those questions to Kraler (real name Kugler) in a letter I sent him in Canada. I also asked him whether Anne seemed to him to be the author of the Diary and how he could explain the fact that Vossen (real name Voskuyl) had believed the Franks to be elsewhere than at 263 Prinsengracht and even, to be exact, in Switzerland. His reply was discourteous. He conveyed my letter and that reply to Mr Frank. It is that letter that, during a telephone conversation, Mr Frank termed “idiotic”. It is, I suppose, that reply that, one year later, earned Kraler a prize of $10,000 from an institution for having “protected Anne Frank and her family during the war, in Amsterdam” (see Hamburger Abendblatt, 6 June 1978, page 13). Notwithstanding its discourtesy, Kraler’s reply was not without interest. He told me that Vossen’s suggestion that the Franks were in Switzerland “was made to protect the family who were in hiding” (letter of 14 April 1977). He added, with regard to Anne, “there have been other greatly gifted young people, even younger than Anne.” I found the first point of this answer precise but incomprehensible, if one recalled that Vossen had, according to his own daughter, the personal feeling that the Franks were in Switzerland. As for the second point, its stereotyped character was striking on the part of a man who, if he had to give a precise and convincing answer, ought to have been spoilt for choice. Kraler, in effect, was supposed to have lived for twenty-five months in almost daily contact with that Anne Frank whose “diary” was an open secret, it seems, for those who knew her.

59) Elli tells me she doesn’t remember how the annex was; she had been there only once, and that was before the fugitives’ arrival – Listening to Elli on 30 November 1977, then to Miep and Henk on 2 December 1977, I was immediately struck with the impression that the three of them had not at all lived for twenty-five months in contact with the Franks and the other fugitives in the manner presented in the Diary. On the other hand, I became convinced that at least Miep and Elli were at 263 Prinsengracht on 4 August 1944, during the police raid. It is difficult for me to relate the insistence with which Elli and Miep avoided my questions on the twenty-five months, coming to and coming back to the day of 4 August 1944. Elli, whom I had had much difficulty tracing, expected neither my visit nor the type of precise questions that I would ask. Miep and Henk were expecting my visit and knew I had seen Mr Frank. In neither of these two interviews did I have to proceed as with Mr Frank. My questions were brief, limited in number and, with certain exceptions, I did not point out to my witnesses either their mutual contradictions or their contradictions with the Diary. Elli, full of good will, seemed to have a good memory of the war years and of the minor events of her daily life then (she was aged 23 in 1944). But, as concerned those twenty-five months, her answers were, in general: “I don’t know… I don’t remember… I can’t explain it to you”. “The coal store? It was in the Van Daans’ room.” “The ashes? I suppose the men took them down.” “Slagter the night watchman? I’ve never heard of him; after the war we had a female secretary of that name.” “Lewin? I never had anything to do with him.” “The ‘bookcase’? You’re right, it was pointless, but it was camouflage for strangers.” I asked Elli to describe first the front house, then the annex. For the front house, she was able to give details; it is true that she used to work there. For the annex, her answer was interesting. She said she had spent, all told, only one night there, and this before the arrival of the eight fugitives! She added that she did not remember the premises, because she had been very nervous. However, in the Diary, Elli is said to come for nearly all her mid-day meals with the people in hiding (see 5 August 1943: Elli arrives regularly at 12:45 pm; 20 August 1943: she arrives regularly at 5:30 pm as a “messenger of freedom”; 2 March 1944: she does the washing up with the two mothers…). Lastly, I asked Elli to recall for me any detail of family life, any anecdote that did not appear in the book. She proved wholly incapable of doing so.

60) Miep and Henk tell me that they spent only one weekend in the annex, and that was before the fugitives’ arrival – Miep and Henk were also unable to provide me with the least detail on the life of the fugitives. The crucial sentence of their testimony was: “We didn’t know exactly how they lived.” And they added: “We were in the annex only for a weekend; we slept in the future room of Anne and Dussel”. “How did the people in hiding heat the place? Perhaps by gas.” “The coal store was downstairs in the shop.” “There was no vacuum cleaner.” “The greengrocer never brought anything to Prinsengracht.” “The ‘bookcase’ was built well before the Franks’ arrival” (!) “I myself, Miep, brought the vegetables whilst Elli brought the milk.” “I myself, Henk, worked elsewhere than in the business but, every day, I came to lunch in the girls’ office and I came to talk with them for 15 or 20 minutes.” (This point amongst others is in total contradiction with the Diary, where it is said that Henk, Miep and Elli take their lunch in the annex, with the fugitives. See 5 August 1943.) During our entire interview, Miep gave me the impression of being under torture. Her gaze avoided mine. When I finally let her talk about 4 August 1944, her attitude suddenly changed altogether. It was with obvious pleasure that she started telling me, with abundance of detail, about the police’s arrival and its aftermath. I noted, however, a striking disproportion in the details in question. They were many, vivid and glaringly true when Miep brought up what had happened to her personally with the Austrian policeman, Silberbauer, either on the day of the arrest or in the following days. But, as soon as it came to the Franks and their companions in misfortune, the details were scarce and vague. Thus was it that Miep had seen nothing of the fugitives’ arrest. She had not seen them leave. She had not seen them climb into the police van because that van, which she had seen through her office window, “was too near the wall of the house”. Henk, from a distance and from the other side of the canal, had seen the police van, but without being able to distinguish the people who were getting in or out. As for the manuscripts, Miep repeated the account she had given to Schnabel. She also told me that Mr Frank, after returning to the Netherlands at the end of May 1945, lived for seven years under their roof. It was only towards the end of June or beginning of July 1945 that she handed him the manuscripts.

61) Why such silence? – In the wake of those two interviews my judgment came to be as follows: These three persons must have, on the whole, told me the truth about their own lives. It is probably true that they had not been familiar with, so to speak, the annex. It is certainly true that, in the front house, life unfolded approximately as they had related (mid-day meal taken together in the secretaries’ office; the shopworkers eating in the shop; little food errands run in the neighbourhood, etc.). It is certainly true that a police raid took place on 4 August 1944 and that Miep had had dealings on that day and the following days with a Karl Silberbauer. It is likely, on the other hand, that the three maintained relations with the Frank family. That being the case, why did they so obviously feel reluctant to talk about it? Let us suppose, in effect, that the Franks and some other fugitives had really lived for 25 months in proximity to these three. In that case, why such silence?

62) The likely truth: a relatively clandestine life, then, after the war, the fabrication of a “diary” full of made up stories – Perhaps the answer to these questions was that the Franks and, possibly, other Jews did in fact live in the annex of 263 Prinsengracht. But they lived there altogether differently from how the Diary relates. For example, they lived a life that was no doubt discrete, but not like being in prison. They were able to live there as did so many other Jews who hid either in the city or out in the country. They “hid without hiding”. Their adventure was sadly banal. It was not of the bizarre, absurd and obviously mendacious character that Mr Frank wanted to pass off as realistic, genuine and true to life. After the war, as much as Mr Frank’s friends were prepared to testify on his behalf, they were still reluctant to endorse the account in the Diary. As much as they were able to vouch for the real sufferings of Mr Frank and his family, they still found it difficult to attest, in addition, to imaginary sufferings. Kraler, Koophuis, Miep, Elli and Henk gave their friendship to Mr Frank; they publicly showed him their sympathy as to a man full of charm and, at the same time, overwhelmed with woes. Perhaps they felt flattered at being presented in the press as Mr Frank’s companions in his days of misfortune. Perhaps some of them accepted the idea that, when a man has suffered, he has the moral right to exaggerate the account of his sufferings a bit. In the eyes of some, the main point may have been that Mr Frank and his family had had to suffer cruelly under the Germans; then the “details” of those sufferings mattered little. But there are limits to complacency. Mr Frank has found only one person to endorse his account of the Diary‘s existence. That person is his friend and former secretary: Miep Van Santen (real name Miep Gies). And Miep’s testimony is oddly timid, at that. It amounts to saying that, after the Franks’ arrest, she had gathered up from the floor of a room in the annex a diary, an accounts book, some notebooks and a certain number of looseleaf sheets. These, for her, were things belonging to Anne Frank. Miep only gave this testimony in an official form thirty years after the facts, on 5 June 1974, in the chambers of Mr Antoun Jacob Dragt, notary in Amsterdam. Miep added that she had made the discovery with Elli. However, on the same day, before the same notary, Elli declared that she remembered having been there when those things were discovered but did not remember exactly how they were discovered. The qualification is a weighty one and must not have pleased Mr Frank.

63) A myth that, with time, has fallen into decay – Schnabel wrote (see section 50) that all the “witnesses” he had questioned – including, therefore, Miep, Elli, Henk, and Koophuis – had acted “as though they had to protect themselves against the [Anne Frank] legend”. He added that if they all had read the Diary, they nevertheless did not mention it. This last sentence obviously means that, in each interview with a witness, it was Schnabel himself who had to take the initiative to talk about the Diary. It is understandable that his book has not been published in Holland, save in a shortened and censored form: it is in Holland that the principal “witnesses” live. For its part, the article in Der Spiegel (see section 55) proves that other “witnesses” of Mr Frank have eventually had the same negative reactions. The foundations of the myth of Anne Frank – a myth that hinges on the truthfulness and authenticity of the Diary – have not become stronger with time: they have fallen into decay.

 

Chapter VI

The two men who, respectively, reported and arrested the Franks

64) Why has Mr Frank wished to assure them anonymity?

65) Mr Frank knew their names but concealed them – As early as 1944 Mr Frank and his friends knew that their supposed “betrayer” was called Van Maaren and the man who arrested them, Silberbauer. Van Maaren was one of the shop workers. Silberbauer was a non-commissioned officer of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service) in Amsterdam. In the Diary as in the aforementioned book by Schnabel, Van Maaren is called V. M. As for Silberbauer, he is called Silberthaler in Schnabel’s book. It seems that, at the time of Holland’s liberation, Van Maaren had some trouble with the law. His guilt could not be proved, Mr Frank told me. “V. M. has had enough troubles like that and should be left alone”, he stated. Schnabel had not wished to take the testimony of V. M. Nor had he wished to take that of the SD man.

66) In 1963 Simon Wiesenthal discovers the arresting officer’s name: conflict with Mr Frank – In 1963 the world press suddenly echoed the resounding news: Simon Wiesenthal had just found the man who arrested the Franks. His name was Silberbauer. He was a policeman in Vienna. Wiesenthal had not advised Mr Frank of his research. The latter, questioned by journalists, declared that he had known the name of the man who arrested him for nearly twenty years. He added that the whole affair was unfortunate and that Silberbauer had only done his duty in arresting him. Miep, for her part, declared that, if she had used the pseudonym of Silberthaler to designate the arresting officer, it was at the request of Mr Frank; the latter had pointed out that there could, in effect, be other persons of the name Silberbauer to whom, consequently, some moral wrong could be done: (De Heer Frank) had mij verzocht de naam Silberthaler te noemen, omdat er misschien nog meer mensen Silberbauer heetten en die zouden wij dan in diskrediet brengen (Volkskrant, 21 November 1963).

67) The arresting officer gets out of trouble at lesser expense – There was a sort of conflict between Simon Wiesenthal and Mr Frank. It was the latter who, in a way, carried the day. In effect, Karl Silberbauer was, after eleven months, reinstated in the Vienna police force. A disciplinary commission, sitting behind closed doors (as is the custom), acquitted him. The appeal commission (Oberdisziplinarkommission) also ruled in his favour, as did the Ministry of the Interior’s commission of inquiry. Silberbauer had indeed arrested the Franks at 263 Prinsengracht, but his participation in “war crimes against the Jews or members of the resistance” could not be proved. In June 1978 I obtained an interview with Wiesenthal at his office in Vienna. With regard to this affair, he told me that Mr Frank was “crazy”. In his opinion, Mr Frank, in his concern to maintain a cult (that of his daughter), intended to accommodate former Nazis, whereas he, Wiesenthal, had only one concern: to see justice done. Wiesenthal did not know the real name of the shop worker V. M. There again Mr Frank had done what was necessary: the Royal Institute of Documentation (for the Second World War), run by his friend Louis De Jong, replied, according to an Amsterdam newspaper (Trouw, 22 November 1963), that that name would not be given to Mr Wiesenthal even if he requested it: deze naam zou men zelfs aan Mr Wiesenthal niet doorgeven, wanneer deze daarom zou verzoeken.

68) A witness from Vienna in 1978 – The Vienna authorities could not authorise me to consult the files of the commissions of inquiry. As for Karl Silberbauer, he died in 1972. My inquiry was thus limited to a perusal of some Dutch, German and French newspapers from 1963 and 1964 and to interviewing a witness whom I believe to be well informed, of good faith and possessed of a good memory. That witness beseeched us, myself and the person accompanying me, not to divulge her name. I promised to keep her name unsaid. I shall only half keep my promise. The importance of her testimony is such that it seems impossible to pass over it in silence. The name of the witness and her address together with my travelling companion’s name and his address are noted on a sheet in a sealed envelope [Annex 2].

69) The arresting officer’s statements in 1963 – Here is, to begin with, what I would call “The testimony of Karl Silberbauer, told to a Dutch journalist of the Hague Post and translated into German by a Jewish German journalist of the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland [6 December 1963, page 10].” Silberbauer tells how at that time (4 August 1944) he had received a telephone call from an unknown person reporting that there were some Jews hiding in a Prinsengracht office: “I then alerted eight Dutchmen of the Security Service (SD) and went with them to Prinsengracht. I saw that one of my Dutch companions was trying to speak with an employee but the latter made an upward gesture with his thumb.” Silberbauer describes how he entered the place where the Jews were hiding: “The people were running about in all directions and packing their bags. A man then came towards me and introduced himself as Otto Frank. He had been, he said, a reserve officer in the German Army. To my question as to how long they had been hiding, Frank answered: ‘Twenty-five months.’ As I did not want to believe him, he took by the hand a young girl standing at his side. That must have been Anne. He placed the child against a door post, which bore some notches in various places. I spoke again to Frank: ‘What a pretty girl you have there!’”

Silberbauer reportedly then said that it was only very much later that he made the connection between that arrest and what the newspapers were saying about the Frank family. After the war, he was greatly surprised on reading the Diary. He especially failed to understand how Anne could know that the Jews were being gassed: “We were all unaware of what awaited the Jews. Above all I don’t understand how Anne in her diary could assert that the Jews were being gassed.” As Silberbauer saw it, nothing would have happened to the Frank family had they not been hiding.

70) The arresting officer, says the 1978 witness, had found neither “pivoting bookcase” nor manuscripts on 4 August 1944 –  That exclusive interview with Silberbauer constitutes a rather faithful summary, I think, of the remarks attributed by the journalists to the man who arrested the Frank family. The testimony that I announced above (section 68) roughly confirms the interview’s content, except that the episode of the raised thumb seems a sheer fabrication. Silberbauer appears to have noted nothing of the kind, for the good reason that he is supposed to have gone immediately towards the annex, merely taking the corridor and the stairs, with no detour towards the offices or the shops. And it is here that the testimony in question provides us with a crucial element. The reader will have noticed that, in his interview, the policeman does not specify how he had gained access to the place where the fugitives were staying. He does not mention the existence of a “pivoting bookcase” (ein drehbares Regal). However, my witness is quite positive of it: Silberbauer had never encountered any such thing, but rather… a crude wooden door like one at the entrance, for example, of a loft. The exact word was ein Holzverschlag. The policeman had simply knocked at the door and… it had been opened for him. A third point of this testimony is, if possible, still more important. Karl Silberbauer said and repeated that he did not believe in the famous Diary‘s authenticity because, according to him, there had never existed in the place anything like the manuscripts Miep claimed to have found, scattered about on the floor, a week after 4 August 1944. The policeman had been in the professional habit of carrying out arrests and searches since before the war. Such a cluster of papers would not have escaped his notice. (Let us add here that eight men accompanied him and that the whole operation had been conducted slowly and correctly; and then, the policeman, after entrusting the key to the premises either to V. M. or another employee, had returned there three times.) Silberbauer, the witness states, used to say that Miep had, in reality, played no big role in all that story (hence the fact that she had not even been arrested). Afterwards, Miep had sought to give herself some importance, notably with the episode of the miraculous discovery of the manuscripts.

71) It should be possible to find, in the Vienna police’s archives, a trace of these statements of the arresting officer –   The same witness told me, in the presence of the person accompanying me, that in 1963-1964 Silberbauer had drawn up an account, for the courts, of the Franks’ arrest and that those details might appear in that account. A second witness of my acquaintance could certainly have given us a very valuable testimony on what Silberbauer said, but that witness preferred not to speak.

Chapter VII

72) Comparison between the Dutch and German texts: wanting to do too much, Mr Frank gave himself away; he signed a literary fraud.

73) Two texts before me – I have before me two texts. The first is in Dutch (designated “D”), the second is in German (designated “G”). The publishers tell me that D is the original text, whilst G is the translation of that original text. I have, a priori, no reason to doubt their word. But scientific rigour, as well as common sense and experience, teach us that publishers’ statements must be received with caution. There is the possibility, in effect, of error or deception on their part. Books are items of merchandise like any others. The labels can be deceiving about the contents. Consequently, here I shall leave to one side the labels proposed to me or imposed on me. I shall speak neither of “original version in Dutch” nor of “translation into German”. I shall temporarily suspend all judgment. I shall accord a precise name to these two books only after receiving appropriate details. For the moment I shall give them a name that is both equal and neutral. I shall therefore speak of texts.

74) I begin, arbitrarily, with the Dutch text – I am going to describe the text D and the text G that I have before me. I shall begin with text D, but I could just as well begin with text G. I insist on this latter point. The order of succession I have chosen here must not be taken to imply any succession in time, nor any link of filiation of the parent/child type between D and G.

75) The Dutch text presents itself as the original. It comprises 169 letters – My text presents itself thus: Anne Frank – Het Achterhuis – Dagboekbrieven 14 juni 1942 – 1 augustus 1944, 1977, Uitgeverij Contact, Amsterdam, Eerste druk 1947 / Vijfenvijftigste druk 1977. The author’s text begins on page 22 with the photographic reproduction of a sort of dedication signed: “Anne Frank, 12 juni 1942”. On page 23 appears the first of the 169 letters making up this “diary” to which the publishers have given the title “The Annex”. The book is 273 pages long. The text ends on page 269. I estimate the length of the text proper at about 72,500 Dutch words. I have not compared the text of this 55th edition with that of the first edition. During my inquiries in Amsterdam I received assurances from Messrs Fred Batten and Christian Blom that no change had been made in the subsequent editions. The two of them were employed by the Contact publishing house and were at the origin, along with Mr P. De Neve (deceased), of the acceptance of the typed manuscript deposited by Mr Frank with an interpreter by the name of Kahn. It is this Mr Kahn who, in 1957, was to accompany and serve as interpreter for Ernst Schnabel when the latter went to see Elli in Amsterdam.

76) The German text presents itself as a translation of the original. It comprises 175 letters signed “Anne”! – My text G presents itself as Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank / 12. Juni 1942 – 1. August 1944, 1977, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag / N° 77 / Ungekürzte Ausgabe / 43. Auflage 1293000-1332000 / Aus dem Holländischen ubertragen von Anneliese Schütz / Holländische Original-Ausgabe, “Het Achterhuis”, Contact, Amsterdam. After the dedication page, the first of the letters appears on page 9. There are 175 letters. The last one ends on page 201. I estimate the length of the text at about 77,000 German words. The book is 203 pages long. This “pocket-sized” paperback was first published in March 1955. Fischer obtained the Lizenzausgabe (distribution licence) from the Lambert-Schneider publishing house in Heidelberg.

77) In principle, six more letters – I note a first disturbing fact. Text D has 169 letters, whereas text G, which is presented as a translation of text D, has 175 letters.

78) In fact, seven more letters and one less letter – I note a second disturbing fact. If I set out in search of text G’s extra letters, I discover not six letters (175 – 169 = 6), but seven. The explanation is as follows: text G does not have text D’s letter of 6 December 1943.

79) The German text seems to have 1,710 more words in the same number of letters – I note a third disturbing fact. The Dutch and German languages being quite close to one another, the text of the translation should not be appreciably longer than the text translated. However, even if I disregard the number of words making up the seven letters in question, I am very far from reaching a difference of circa 4,500 words (G 77,000 – D 72,500 = 4,500). This is because G, even when it possesses letters in common with D, possesses them under another form: in any case, under a longer form. Here is my demonstration, consisting of the relevant figures:

 

[Error on my part (R. Faurisson): The letter of 12 May 1944 (380 words) is not missing from text D. It exists in D but dated: 11 May. What is missing from D is the letter of 11 May but which, in text G, has… 520 words!]

 

In reality, as will be seen further on, this figure represents only a small part of the words in greater number in text G. But, meanwhile, in order not to seem too attached to the calculations, I shall give precise examples concerning about 550 words.

80) And then, additional fragments – Amongst the letters that texts D and G apparently possess in common, here are some (amongst many others) where G possesses additional fragments, i.e. fragments of which the Dutch reader has never been aware:

                                                                       ______

Total of these simple examples                            550 words

81) And then, missing fragments – Amongst the letters that texts D and G apparently possess in common, here are some (amongst many others) where text G is missing some fragments, i.e. fragments of which the German reader has never been aware:

17. Nov. 1942           «Speciale… overgelegd»      15 words
18. Juni 1943           «Daar Pim… heeft»              30
19. Juli 1943            «Ijdelheid… persoontje»       20

                                                                     __________

Total of these simple examples                              65 words

 

One remarkable fact is that the missing fragments are both quite numerous and quite short. For example, the letter of 20 August 1943 is cut by 19 words in the German text, and those 19 words are distributed as follows: 3 + 1 + 4 + 4 + 7 = 19

82) And then, roaming fragments – I note a fourth disturbing fact. This fact is independent of the extra or missing quantities, for it is a question of fragments of letters that travel, in a way, from one letter to another, from text D to text G. For instance, all of the penultimate paragraph of D’s letter of donderdag, 27 april 1944 is found in the final paragraph of G’s letter of Dienstag, 25. April 1944. On 7 January 1944 the final paragraph of text D becomes, in G, the sixth paragraph before the end. On 27 April 1944 D’s last paragraph but one becomes, in G, the final paragraph of the letter of 25 April 1944.

83) Gravest of all, the alterations of the common base: the Germans read another text than the Dutch – I note a fifth disturbing fact. This time it is not a matter of additions, of removals, of transpositions, but of alterations that are the sign of incompatibilities. What I mean is this: suppose I leave aside all the elements by which texts D and G differ so visibly from one another, and suppose I turn now to what I would call “the remainder” (a “remainder” that, according to the publishers, ought to make up “the common base”, “the identical part”): I realise to my surprise that, from beginning to end of these two books (apart from some very rare exceptions), this “remainder” is quite far from being identical. As will be seen by the following examples, these incompatibilities cannot be ascribed to a clumsy or fanciful translation. The same letter of 10 March 1943 gives, for D, Bij kaarslicht (“By candlelight”) and for G, Bei Tage (“By daylight”); een nacht (“one night”) for Eines Tages (“One day”); verdwenen dieven (“the burglars disappeared”) for schwieg der Larm (“the noise stopped”). On 13 January 1943 Anne says that she rejoices at the prospect, after the war, of buying nieuwe kleren en schoenen (“new clothes and shoes”); that is in text D, for in text G she speaks of neue Kleider und Bücher (“new clothes and books”). On 18 May 1943 Mrs Van Daan is als door Mouschi gebeten (“as if bitten by Mouschi [the cat]”); that is in text D, for in text G she is wie von einer Tarantel gestochen (“as if stung by a tarantula”). Depending on whether one consults D or G, a man is a “fascist” or a Riese (“colossus”) (20 October 1942). “Fine little chairs” (fijne stoeltjes) turn into “expensive furniture” (kostbaren Mobel) (29 October 1942). “Red beans and white beans” (bruine en witte bonen) turn into “white beans” (weisse Bohnen) (12 March 1943). Sandals for 6½ guilders become sandals without indication of price (ibidem), whilst “a group of five hostages” (een stuk of 5 gijzelaars) has become “a certain number of these hostages” (eine Anzahl dieser Geiseln), and this in the same letter of 9 October 1942 where “the Germans” (Duitsers) are now only “these Germans” (diese Deutschen), the very particular ones who are the Nazis (see section 54). On 17 November 1942 Dussel finds the Franks and the Van Daans in their hideout. Text D says “Miep helped him take off his overcoat” (Miep liet hem zijn jas uitdoen); on learning that the Franks are there “he nearly fainted from astonishment” and, says Anne, he remained “silent” “as though he wanted first a little time, a moment, to read the truth on our faces” (viel hij haast fiauw van verbazing sprakeloos alsof hij eerst even goed de waarheid van onze gezichten wilde lezen); but text G, for its part, says of Dussel that he “had to take off his overcoat” and describes his astonishment : “he could not understand […] he couldn’t believe his eyes” (Er musste den Mantel ausziehen kannte er es nicht fassen und wollte seinen Augen nicht trauen). A person with an eye ailment, rinsing the eyes “with camomile tea” (bette het met kamillen-the), becomes a person who “made some compresses” (machte Umschläge) (10 December 1942). Where “Papa” alone is waiting (Pim verwacht) it is “we” all who are waiting (Wir erwarten) (27 February 1943). Where the two cats get their names Moffi and Tommi depending on whether they look boche (German) or angliche (English), “Just as in politics” (Net als in de politek), text G says that they were named “according to their disposition of spirit” (Ihren Anlagen gemäss) (12 March 1943). On 26 March 1943 people who “were quite awake” (waren veel wakken) become people who “were in an endless fear” (schreckten immer wieder auf), “a slip of flannel” (een lap flanel) becomes a “mattress cover” (Matratzenschoner) (1 May 1943). “To go on strike” (staken) “in many sectors” (in viele gebieden) becomes: “there is sabotage all over” (an allen Ecken und Enden sabotiert wird) (ibidem). A “folding bed” (harmonicabed) turns into a “chaise-longue” (Liegestuhl) (21 August 1942). The following sentence: “The cannon fire was no longer anything for us, our fear had gone” (Het kanonvuur deerde ons niet meer, onze angst was weggevaad) becomes: “and the situation, for today, was saved” (und die Situation war für heute gerettet) (18 May 1943).

84) Examples of additions, removals and, especially, alterations taken from a group of eleven letters – I had noted these few examples of incompatibilities during a simple perusal that went no further than the 54^th letter of text D (18 May 1943). I decided then to make a much more rigorous perusal, precisely of the eleven letters from 19 July to 29 September 1943 (nos. 60 to 75). I decided to add to the incompatibilities the additions and removals. The result was such that the simple enumeration of the differences noted would require several typewritten pages, which I cannot provide here. I shall be content to give some examples, avoiding the most striking ones because, unfortunately, they are also the longest to cite.

• Letter of 19 July 1943: “parents killed” (dode ouders) becomes “parents” (Eltern);
• letter of 23 July 1943: G has at least 49 more words + 3 words;
• letter of 26 July 1943: G has 4 + 4 more words, and is lacking 2 words: over Italië;
• letter of 29 July 1943: G has twenty fewer words, and “twenty years” (twintig jaar) becomes “twenty-five years” (25 Jahren);
• letter of 3 August 1943: this letter of 210 words in text G is missing completely from text D;
• letter of 4 August 1943: D gives “divan” and G “chaise-longue.” In D a flea “floats” (drijft) in the wash water, “only in warm months or weeks” (allen in de hete maanden of weeken), whilst for G that flea must “lose its life” there (sein Leben lassen), with no information on the weather. D gives “to use cotton wool [soaked] in hydrogen peroxide (this serves to bleach her black moustache fuzz)” (waterstofwatjes hanteren [dient om zwarte snorharen te bleken]), whilst G gives simply “and other little toiletry secrets”) (und andere kleine Toilettengehemniss). The comparison of “like a brook falling from a mountain” (als een beekje van een berg) becomes “like a brook on the pebbles” (wie ein Bächlein über die Kiesel). “Irregular French verbs”: this is what Anne thinks about in text D (aan Franse onregalmatige wekworden) but, in text G, it can only be about irregular Dutch verbs, it seems, since she says that she “dreams” (träume ich) of “irregular verbs” (von unregelmässigen Verben). Text G is content with: “Brrrrrring, upstairs [sounds the Van Daans’] alarm” (Krrrrrrrr, oben der Wecker), whilst D gives: “Brrring… the little alarm [sounds], which at any hour of the day (when it is asked to, or sometimes also without being asked) may raise its little voice.” (Trrr het wekkertje, dat op elk uur van de dag [als men er naar vraagt of soms ook sonder dat] zijn stemmetje kan verheffen);
• letter of 5 August 1943: the whole description of the usual meal, from 1:15 pm to 1:45 pm, and of what follows is the subject of significant differences; besides, what is announced by D as “The big share-out” is announced by G as “Small lunch” (De grote uitdeling – Kleiner Lunch). I underline the adjectives; D’s possible, but not certain, irony has disappeared in G. Of the three “divans” in D there subsists but one “divan” in G;
• letter of 7 August 1943: this letter constitutes quite an interesting enigma. Very long, it begins, in text G, with nine lines introducing a story covering 74 lines entitled Kaatje along with another story 99 lines long entitled Katrientje. This letter is altogether absent from text D. Dutch readers, for their part, know of these stories only by way of a separate book entitled “Stories”, in which there also appear other “unpublished stories” of Anne Frank;
• letter of 9 August 1943: amongst a good number of other curiosities there are “horn-rimmed glasses” (een hoornen bril) that become, in text G, “dark horn-rimmed glasses” (eine dunkle Hornbrille);
• letter of 10 August 1943: the “war materiel” of D becomes the “guns” (Kanonen) of G. The sentence about the bell of Westertoren is wholly different. And, especially, G has an episode of 140 words that does not appear in D. In it Anne, who has received some new light shoes, tells of a series of mishaps having occurred on that day: she pricked her right thumb with a big needle; she bumped her forehead against the cupboard door and got a “scolding” (Ruffel) for the noise she made; she was unable to soothe her forehead with water because the tap must not be run; she has a large bump over her right eye; she caught her big toe in the vacuum cleaner; her foot became infected and is all swollen. Result: Anne cannot put on her pretty new shoes. (One will have noted here the presence of a vacuum cleaner in a place where a constant silence should be maintained);
• letter of 18 August 1943: amongst nine differences, “beans” (bonen) are seen turning into “green peas” (Erbsen);
• letter of 20 August 1943: I shall note only one example of variance: it concerns the bread. The account is appreciably different and, moreover, for D, this bread is found in two successive places: first in the steel cupboard (stalen kast) of the office in the front house giving onto the street (voorkantoor), then, in the cupboard of the kitchen (keukenkast) in the annex, whilst G mentions only the first location, without specifying the second; unhappily the first location mentioned by D is a simple cabinet in the office looking onto… the courtyard – which is Kraler’s office and not that of Koophuis (“the bread, which is put in Kraler’s room for us every day”)! (With regard to the respective offices of Kraler and Koophuis, see the letter of 9 July 1942.) Here there is a serious material contradiction between the two texts, with changes of words, sentences, etc.;
• letter of 23 August 1943: amongst other curiosities, “to read or study” (lesen of leren) becomes “to read or write” (lesen oder schreiben), “Dickens and the dictionary” (Dickens en het woordenbook) becomes only “Dickens”, “bolsters” (peluwen) turn into “eiderdown pillows” (Plumeaus) (in Dutch, “eider-down pillows” would be called eiderdons or dekbed);
• letter of 10 September 1943: amongst five differences, I note that the broadcast, so eagerly awaited each day, of Radio Oranje (the Voice of Holland overseas) begins at 8:15 pm for D and at 8:00 pm for G;
• letter of 16 September 1943: “ten valerianes” (tien valeriaantjes) become “ten of the little white pills” (zehn von den kleinen weissen Pillen). “A long face and a drooping mouth” (een uitgestreken gezicht en neerhangende mond) become “a tight-lipped mouth with worry lines” (einen zusammengekniffennen Mund und Sorgenfalten). The winter likened to a fearsome obstacle, a “biting” winter that, here, is like a “big block of stone” (het grote rotsblok, dat winter heet), is nothing but a simple winter (dem Winter). An “overcoat” (jas) becomes “hat and cane” (Hut und Stock). A 24-word sentence, purporting to describe a picturesque scene, finds itself reduced to five German words. Conversely, six Dutch words become 13 German ones with a very different meaning;
• letter of 29 September 1943: “a grumbling father” (een mopperenden vader) becomes “the father who does not agree with her choice” (den Vater, der nicht mit ihrer Wahl einverstanden ist). “Energetically” (energiek) becomes ganz kalt und ruhig (“in a quite cold and quiet manner”), etc.

85) The first letter, by itself, gives an idea of the upheavals the text has undergone – It is pointless, I think, to carry on with such a register. And not exaggerated to say that the first letter of the collection gives us, in a way, the tone of the whole. In that short letter Dutch readers learn that, for her birthday, Anne has received “a little plant” (een plantje). Germans have the privilege of knowing that the plant was “a cactus” (eine Kaktee). On the other hand, the Dutch know that Anne has received “two peony branches,” whilst the Germans must be content with being told of “some peony branches” (einige Zweige Pfingstrosen). The Dutch are entitled to the following sentence: “such were, that morning, the children of Flora who stood on my table” (dat waren die ochtend de kinderen van Flora, die op mijn tafel stonden). In the German text, the table has disappeared, as have “the children of Flora” (a curious stereotyped phrase coming from the pen of a child of thirteen; one would expect it rather from an adult seeking laboriously and naively to “beflower” his style). The Germans have the right simply to: “These were the first flowers offered by way of greetings” (Das waren die ersten Blumengrüsse). The Dutch learn that Anne, on that day, will make a present to her teachers and classmates of “butter biscuits” (boterkoekjes). The Germans are entitled to “sweets” (Bonbons). The “chocolate”, which is there for the Dutch, will disappear for the Germans. More surprising: a book that Anne will be able to buy herself with the money just given her on this Sunday 14 June 1942 becomes, in the German text, a book that she has already bought (zodat ik me kan kopen / habe ich mir gekauft).

86) There have not been bad translations but, rather, deliberate transformations – In contrast, the final letter of the collection is identical in the two texts. This confirms, if there was need for it, that the German translator – if it was right to speak of “translation” – was quite capable of respecting the Dutch text. But it is too obvious now that one should hardly speak of translation, or even of “adaptation”. Is putting day for night (10 March 1943) translating, or “adapting”? Or books for shoes (13 January 1943)? Sweets for butter biscuits (14 June 1942)? Colossus for fascist (20 October 1942)? Is “candles” translated by “day”, “cat” by “tarantula”?, “to float” by “to die”?, “big” by “small” (4 August 1943)? Only conjurers can change an overcoat into a hat and cane. With Mrs Anneliese Schütz and Mr Frank, the table disappears (14 June 1942) and the stairway steals away (the Dutch letter of 16 September 1943 mentions a very odd stairway that would seem to lead directly to the persons in hiding: die direct naar boven leidt). The store of bread changes location. What is behind is found in front (Kraler’s office). Numbers appear and disappear. Hours change. Faces are transformed. Events multiply or disappear. Both beings and things are subject to eclipses and sudden transformations. Anne, one might say, emerges from the grave in order to lengthen or shorten one of her stories; sometimes she makes another story of it, or else restores it to oblivion.

87) The German text itself was reworked in the “pocket” edition – Ten years after Anne’s death her text continues to change. In 1955 the Fischer publishing house publishes her Diary as a pocket paperback in a “discreetly” reworked form. The reader may especially compare the following letters:

• 9 July 1942: Hineingekommen gemalt war (25 words) replaced by Neben gemalt war (41 words). Apparition of a door!
• 11 July 1942: bange replaced by besorgt;
• 21 September 1942: gerügt replaced by gescholten and drei Westen turning into drei Wolljacken;
• 27 September 1942: mit Margot bin ich nicht mehr so intim becomes mit Margot verstehe mich nicht sehr gut;
• 28 September 1942: bestürzt replaced by erschüttert;
• 7 November 1942: ohne den Hergang zu kennen becomes ohne zu wissen, worum es ging and Er ist mein Ideal becomes Er ist mein leuchtendes Vorbild. That last transformation is not without piquancy, if one knows that it concerns Anne’s father. Mr Frank is no longer an “ideal” for his daughter, but “a glowing model”! Another change: und das Ärgste ist becomes und am schlimmsten ist;
• 7 August 1943: I have pointed out above (section 84) this very long letter containing two stories. I suppose those stories existed in the manuscript that was reserved for them and that they were wrongfully inserted in the Diary. In that case, one wonders who wrote the nine lines of introduction, where Anne notably asks her penpal whether she thinks children are going to like her stories.

88) There have thus been constant manipulations – These last transformations were made from one German text to another German text. They can therefore hardly have the excuse of a clumsy or fanciful translation. They prove that the Diary’s author – the term by which, quite normally, I call the person responsible for the text I am reading – was still alive in 1955. Likewise, when coming upon the German text of 1950 (the Lambert-Schneider edition), I discovered that the author of the Diary (a particularly prolific author) was still alive in 1950. That author could not be Anne Frank who, as is well known, died in 1945.

89) The variations cannot be explained by citing the existence of variants –  In my comparisons of texts I have followed the official chronological order. I have shown how the text printed in Dutch (1947) clashed with the first printed German text (1950) which, in its turn, underwent strange metamorphoses in the second printed German text (1955). But, scientifically, nothing proves that the chronological order of release reflects the chronological order of composition. For instance, there may have been manuscripts in German that preceded the putting together of the Dutch manuscripts. It may be that the model or the “originator” outline was drafted in German. It may be that, afterwards, that model or that outline, after giving birth to a text translated into Dutch, also gave birth to a wholly drafted German text. It may be that, for several years, some very different texts thus lived in symbiosis. This phenomenon is called the phenomenon of contamination. It is nonetheless clear that Mr Frank cannot invoke this argument of contamination of texts for there exists, according to him, but one sole text: that of the Dutch manuscripts. For certain periods of the twenty-five months of Prinsengracht, it may be that the different manuscripts of the Diary propose variants; still, those variants could not present the innumerable absurdities and inconsistencies that we have seen. For other periods, like that of a whole year (from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943), where, by Mr Frank’s own admission, only one version is available, there should not exist the least variant, not the least disagreement between text D and text G. It is for this reason that I chose the greatest number of my examples of incompatibilities from that period.

90) Tremendous differences between the Anne Frank of the Dutch text and the Anne Frank of the German text: the slightly silly young kid and the perverse, highly cultured girl – I have noted, in my samplings, neither more nor fewer inconsistencies for that period than for the others. In a steady manner, text D presents an Anne Frank who has, if not the traits, at least the stereotype of the young adolescent, whereas text G offers the stereotype of the adolescent already near, in certain respects, to being a mature woman. There are, in text G, passages that are incompatible with the corresponding passages of text D, and even formally incompatible with the whole substance of all of text D. There the height of the intolerable is attained in the manipulation of the texts. Here is, for instance, the letter of 5 January 1944. Anne confesses that before her time in hiding, i.e. before the age of thirteen, she had happened, while spending the night at the house of a girlfriend, to feel the need to kiss her: “I had a strong need to kiss her, and I did so” (een sterke behoefte had haar te zoenen en dat ik dat ook gedaan her). In text G there appears a girl of thirteen who is markedly saucier. Here, Anne asked her companion of a night whether, as a token of their friendship, they might not feel one another’s breasts. But the companion had refused. And Anne, who seems to have some practice in the matter, adds: “I still found it pleasant to kiss her and I did so” (fragte ich sie, ob wir als Beweis unserer Freundschaft uns gegenseitig die Brüste befühlen wollten, aber sie weigerte sich. Ich fand es immer sch…n, sie zu küssen, und habe es auch getan). On Anne’s sexual feelings I also recommend a comparative reading of texts D and G for 7 January 1944.

It is astonishing that the Dutch reader should have been deprived of so many revelations reserved by Mr Frank and Anneliese Schütz for… Anne’s grandmother, who was so “aged” (see section 54). And such revelations again in text G on musical tastes or knowledge of which the Dutch were not entitled to be aware (for what reason, actually?)! Text G of the letter of 9 June 1944 gives us exclusive entitlement to a 200-word dissertation on the life of Liszt (termed, by a very feminist Anne, a “skirt chaser” – Schürzenjäger), on Beethoven, Wagner, Chopin, Rossini, Mendelssohn; several other names are mentioned: Hector Berlioz, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac… The letter of 20 February 1944 (220 words) is absent from the Dutch edition. It contains, however, elements of capital importance from several points of view. Dussel is in the habit of whistling das Violin-Konzert von Beethoven; we are told how time is spent on Sundays; it must be acknowledged that one point, at least, about this way of passing the time is more than disturbing: Mr Frank has come up in overalls, on his knees, brushing the carpet with such verve that the whole room is filled with clouds of dust (Vater liegt im Overall auf den Knien und bürstet den Teppich mit solchem Elan, dass das ganze Zimmer in Staubwolken gehüllt ist). Besides the noise that such an operation would make in a place where even during the night, when the neighbours are not about, one must not cough, it is obvious that the scene is described by someone who cannot have seen it: a carpet is never brushed in that way on the floor of a room, in the same place where it became dusty. In the entry of 3 November 1943 a fragment of 120 words, which is missing from text D, reveals another carpet brushing done each evening by Anne in the Ofenluft (the open air), and this because the vacuum cleaner (der Staubsauger) ist kaputt (that famous vacuum cleaner which, according to Mr Frank, cannot have existed – see section 37). Regarding Anne’s knowledge or ideas on the subject of historical or political events, there are discoveries to be made in the letters of 6, 13 and 27 June 1944. On Peter’s character, there will be revelations in the letter of 11 May 1944. This 520-word letter does not exist in text D. And yet, in text D, a letter is to be found at that date of 11 May; however, in text G, the corresponding text is dated 12 May! Peter defies his mother in calling her “the old lady” (Komm mit, Alte!). Nothing like the Peter of text D!

91) Neither of these two Anne Franks has any substance –  It would be interesting to subject each of the main characters of texts D and G to psychological or psychiatrical analysis. Anne, in particular, would appear under some deeply contradictory character traits. But this is pure hypothesis. I think, in fact, that the analysts would see that Anne has no more real substance than an invention out of nothing. The few alleged descriptions of Anne that I have been able to come across have above all convinced me that the persons making them had read the Diary very superficially. It is true that the platitude of these descriptions could be explained by the platitude of the subject described. One stereotype begets another, as one lie begets another.

92) Two languages and two styles – The language and style of D strive to be characteristic of a teenaged girl, naive and self-conscious. The language and style of text G strive to be characteristic of an adolescent already close, in certain respects, to being a grown and free woman. This is obvious simply from the fragments I have cited – fragments, however, that I have not chosen with a view to studying the two Anne Franks’ language and style.

93) Mr Frank has a taste for writing and a propensity to fabricate – Mr Frank has indulged in inventing stories. This is easily noted when seeing how he has transformed the printed German text of 1950 (Lambert-Schneider) in order to make the Fischer text (1955). It is here, in particular, that he has his daughter Anne say that her father is her “ideal” (1950 version); then, after reflection, that he is her “glowing model” (1955 version). This taste for invention did not come to Mr Frank all at once. We are told by one of Anne’s former teachers that he was in the harmless habit of composing, “with his daughter”, stories and poems (“Sometimes she told me stories and poems which she had made up together with him”, Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, page 41). This was happening in or around 1940. Anne was eleven years old and her father was 51. In 1942 Mr Frank, a former banker in Frankfurt and a former trader and businessman in Amsterdam, was taking forced retirement at the age of 53. I doubt that he lost his taste for writing during his long days of idleness then. In any case, the Diary gives us barely any information on what Mr Frank did with his days. But no matter! Mr Frank is an inventor of stories who has betrayed himself. The misfortune of such inventors is that they go on adding to their stories. They never stop touching up, reworking, cutting out bits, correcting. In doing so they eventually arouse the distrust of some people. And it is child’s play for those people to prove the invention. It is quite easy to confound Mr Frank. It suffices to have to hand the D edition and one of the two different G editions. It suffices to remind him that he has stated in writing to his Dutch readers: “I guarantee you that here, on such or such date, Anne wrote day or shoes or butter biscuits or fascist or big,” whilst to the Germans he has stated in writing, with regard to the same places and the same dates: “I guarantee you that Anne wrote: night or books or sweets or colossus or small.” If Mr Frank has told the truth in the first case, he has made up a story in the second case. And vice-versa. He has made up a story either here or there. Or again – and this is the more likely – he has made up a story both here and there. In any event it will never be possible to claim that Mr Frank, in this matter of the Diary, is a man who has told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

94) One same manuscript cannot have given rise to such heterogeneous texts – The Diary can by no means be genuine. It is superfluous to consult allegedly authentic manuscripts. In effect, no manuscript in the world could attest to Anne Frank’s success in the miraculous prowess of writing two words at once and – what is more – two words with incompatible meanings, and – better still – two whole texts at once which, most of the time, are utterly contradictory. It is indeed admitted that any printed text may have a critical apparatus with its variants, its critical notes, its indications of the possible existence of interpolations. But I have already said (see section 88) that, where only one manuscript is available, there are no longer any possible variants (barring specific cases: difficulties in deciphering a word, errors in previous editions). And when several manuscripts are available (two, at most, for certain periods of the Diary; perhaps three in some very limited cases), it is enough to eliminate those periods and those cases and confine oneself strictly to the periods and cases where one has had to make do with a single manuscript (here, the period from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943).

95) The nine successive states of the Diary – In the event, henceforth inconceivable, that there should exist an authentic manuscript, I say that none of the printed texts can claim to reproduce the text of that manuscript. The following table establishes, actually, that the 1955 Fischer edition comes in at eighth place in the order of succession of the Diary’s various states. For a good understanding of this table the reader is referred particularly to sections 52 and 53.

 

(“Official”) chronological table of successive
states of the text of the Diary

 

One might, of course, claim that (V) was perhaps only a very faithful tidying up of (IV). The same for (VII) in relation to (VI). This would be to suppose that Mr Frank, who was always reworking the text, had suddenly refrained from doing so at the time of recopying, without any witness, text (IV), and at the time of the likely correcting of the proofs for (VII). Personally, I see these nine stages as a minimum to which, indeed, must be added one, two or perhaps three “Abschrift” for text (VIII).

96) The outcome of a study of the manuscripts could only prove more damning for Mr Frank – The sole interest in studying the manuscripts allegedly written by Anne Frank would be to bring to light elements still more damning for Mr Frank: for example, some letters or fragments of letters that have never been published (the reasons for non-publication should be sought carefully, without trusting in those given by Mr Frank, which always have a very suspect sentimental colouring); also for example, some quite variable names for Anne’s “correspondents” (the idea of portraying her always addressing herself to the same “dear Kitty” seems a belated one), etc.

97) A work is not defined by a variable base but by fixed forms, from its creation –  A reasoning consisting in claiming that, in the Diary, there existed, all the same, a grounding in truth would be a worthless reasoning. First, because one would need to know that truth or be able to make it out amidst the jumble of definite fictions; lying is, most often, merely the art of adjusting the truth. Then, because a work of the mind (as, for example, the writing of a “diary”) is not defined by a grounding but by a set of forms: the forms of a written expression, the forms that an individual has given to it once and for all, for better or for worse.

98) There has been much more than mere modifications – A reasoning consisting in saying that there have been only a few hundred modifications between such and such form of the Diary is disingenuous. The word “modifications” is too vague. It makes possible, depending on each person’s wishes, all condemnations or, especially, all excuses. Furthermore, a modification can concern, as we have seen, either a single word or a text of 1,600 words!

99) There have been a considerable number of additions, removals, transpositions and alterations – For my part, I have pointed out several hundred modifications, be it only between the Dutch text and either of the two texts – which differ from one another – that have been published in Germany. I call those modifications: additions, removals, transpositions and alterations (by substitutions of one word for another or of a group of words for another, these words and these groups of words being incompatible with one another, even if, in highly exceptional cases, the meaning could be safeguarded [?]). The set of these modifications must concern approximately 25,000 words of the Fischer text which, for its part, must be 77,000 words long (this is, in any event, the number I take as a base).

100) Even a bad translation can remain a translation. Here, there are two distinct books – The French translation of Het Achterhuis can be termed a translation, despite the absence of one of the 169 letters of the Dutch Contact edition and despite a fair number of weaknesses, despite also some oddities that lead one to think, here as well, that unfortunate discoveries may still lie ahead. (Journal d’Anne Frank, Het Achterhuis, translated from the Dutch by T. Caren and Suzanne Lombard, Calmann-Levy, Paris 1950, printed 5 January 1974, 320 pages.) The Lambert Schneider edition can by no means be presented as a translation. As for the Fischer edition, it can be called neither a reproduction of the Lambert Schneider edition nor a translation of Het Achterhuis.

101) Two noticeably different books that appeared in a suspect context – This impressive set of additions, removals, transpositions, alterations; these stories made up by Mr Frank; these editors’ dishonesties; these interventions by outsiders, friends of Mr Frank; this existence of two books, so different, presented as one and the same Diary of Anne Frank, all this reveals a work that cannot, in any way, retain the prestige attached to an authentic testimony. The various incompatibilities between the texts are of all different kinds. They concern the language and style, the length and form of the pieces making up the Diary, the number and nature of the anecdotes related, the description of places, the mentioning of material realities, the dialogues, the ideas exchanged, the tastes expressed; they concern the very personalities of the principal characters, beginning with Anne Frank’s own personality, which gives the impression of belonging to a purely fictional world.

102) Our post-war era has been fertile in false memoirs – In  standing as personal guarantor for the authenticity of this work, which is merely an invention of his own, Mr Frank (who, besides, obviously intervened at all stages of the book’s genesis) has signed what may fittingly be called a literary fraud. The Diary of Anne Frank is to be shelved in the already well stocked section of false memoirs. Our post-war era has been fertile in books or writings of this genre. Amongst these false, apocryphal or suspect works (either entirely or as regards insertion of foreign elements) one may cite: the various “testimonies” of Rudolf Höss, Kurt Gerstein, Miklos Nyiszli, Emmanuel Ringelblum, the memoirs of Eva Braun, Adolf Eichmann, Walter Schellenberg, but also the document entitled “Prayer of John XXIII for the Jews”. One may above all cite the false diaries of children fabricated by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and denounced by French historian Michel Borwicz, himself of Polish Jewish origin; amongst those diaries, that of one Therese Hescheles, aged thirteen, might feature.

103) Mr Frank has signed a literary fraud – l would be remiss in failing to mention that amongst the most famous fakes of all is one fabricated against the Jews: this is the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”. I ask that people not misunderstand the sense I have given to my research on the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank. Even if my personal conviction is that this work comes from Mr Frank, even if I think that at the rate of two letters per day three months were enough for him to set up his clumsy stories in their first state, even if I think he did not believe that his work would meet with huge success (which, by the same token, would risk evidencing its terrible flaws to the world), even if I think a thousand mitigating circumstances can be found for him, even if I am convinced he did not at all seek to mount a vast swindle but that he ended up, like a man led along by the circumstances, endorsing all the extraordinarily brilliant consequences of an obscure and banal undertaking – in spite of all that, the truth obliges me to say that the Diary of Anne Frank is but a mere literary fraud.

________

 

Postscript – 1 April 2003

On pages 117-119 of the R.I.O.D. edition, David Barnouw claims to summarise what he is kind enough to call my expert study. He does so not without insinuating that I am a cheater.

Of all my arguments of a material or physical order, he retains only one, that of the untimely noises. And of all those noises he retains only three. He claims that, in all three cases, I hid the fact that Anne had specified that, since the “enemies” were not there, there was no risk of those noises’ being heard. My answer is that the nearby “enemies” (for example, the two shopworkers) might not have been there, but the other “enemies”, indefinite in number, were in a position to perceive those noises: that of the vacuum cleaner, every day at 12.30, as well as the “bursts of laughter” and even a noise “to wake the dead”. D. Barnouw has the greatest difficulty explaining these noises, and a lot of others, sometimes appalling ones, in a dwelling where there should have reigned the silence of the tomb. And, to save himself any effort, he has sought a subterfuge in considerations as vague as they are murky. In effect, he writes:

The diary tells us that the inhabitants of the annex, themselves as well, ran numerous risks, in particular that of being heard by others should they make too much noise. However, Faurisson has not sought better to grasp the general situation of clandestinity as such and, in this context, has utterly ignored the fact that the Frank family and their companions in hiding were eventually arrested (p. 117).

D. Barnouw here indulges in a pathos allowing him to conclude brazenly: “It is not necessary, in light of the foregoing, to subject to critical examination each one of the points mentioned by Faurisson” (p. 118). For my part, I consider that this last remark proves that the officials of the R.I.O.D. have not, by their own admission, wanted to “subject to critical examination” an essential part of my study, that concerning the physical or material impossibilities of the story.

There is another point where D. Barnouw insinuates that I am dishonest. On page 261 of Serge Thion’s book I said I had discovered, during my inquiry into the circumstances of the arrest of the eight fugitives in Amsterdam on 4 August 1944, a particularly interesting witness. I wrote:

That witness [in 1978] beseeched us, myself and the person accompanying me, not to divulge her name. I promised to keep her name unsaid. I shall only half keep my promise. The importance of her testimony is such that it seems impossible to pass over it in silence. The name of the witness and her address, together with my travelling companion’s name and his address, are noted on a sheet in a sealed envelope in my appendix 2: “Confidential” [to be submitted to the court of Hamburg].

D. Barnouw begins by quoting these lines, but leaves out the sentence revealing the reason for my discretion: the witness had “beseeched” us – that was the word – not to name her. Then, the same D. Barnouw deceitfully adds:

A photo of this sealed envelope is reproduced in the appendix to Faurisson’s study in its 1980 French version [that appearing in S. Thion’s book]; the publisher of the Dutch version has judiciously declined to produce this piece of evidence (p. 119).

In other words, I was supposed to have tricked my readers, letting them, by means of an alleged ruse, believe that my envelope did not actually contain any names. For D. Barnouw, either the envelope had never existed or it was empty. The truth was that I had indeed submitted to the court of Hamburg an envelope containing the names and addresses of my witness and of the man who accompanied me. Today, 22 years on, I believe I am authorised to disclose those names, known to the court: the widow Mrs Karl Silberbauer and Mr Ernst Wilmersdorf, both living in Vienna.

I take the opportunity of this clarification also to reveal the names of the three French academics who, on page 299 of S. Thion’s book, are said to have approved of my analysis of Anne Frank’s alleged diary. The first was none other than Michel Le Guern, then teaching at the University of Lyon-2 and who has just published in the prestigious collection “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade” a scholarly edition of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées; a greater proficiency in textual criticism could scarcely be imagined. In 1978, in the closing sentence of his attestation, he wrote:

It is certain that the practices of literary communication authorise Mr Frank, or anyone else, to construct as many fictional figures of Anne Frank as he may like, but on condition he not assert that the figure of his daughter is identical to any of those fictional beings.

Two other academics were about to find along the same lines when suddenly, in November 1978, the “Faurisson affair” flared up in the press. They were Frédéric Deloffre and Jacques Rougeot, both of the Sorbonne-Paris IV.

The three academics in question are now in retirement, and that is why I have decided to reveal their names. Besides, I had undertaken no duty of confidentiality in their regard.

 

Photographic documentation as presented in Serge Thion (ed.),
Vérité historique ou vérité politique ?, La Vielle Taupe, Paris 1980